The Changeling (PG-13)

[KernilCrash]

The Changeling

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Rating:  PG-13.   
Category:  Future Fic -- approximately a quarter of a cycle after the end of PKW.
Disclaimer:  The characters and universe of Farscape are the property of the Jim Henson, Co., and I am endlessly thankful that they are generous enough to tolerate us playing with their creation. 
Spoilers:  This story contains spoilers for Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars.

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Test Drivers/Betareaders:  I can never offer enough thanks to PKLibrarian, Reefrunner, and CrystalMoon for their help.  The proverbial brick wall and I became intimately acquainted very early in the creation of this story, and it took a combination of some insightful comments, strong urgings from these three (also known as a swift kick in the butt), and some pretty drastic surgery for me to get this story finished up in acceptable condition.  Thank you to everyone who contributed to this story. 

Author’s Note:  The idea for The Changeling infiltrated my Farcosis-afflicted brain almost a full year ago.  The original concept had it running about a quarter of the length you are going to run into here, and I dreamed it up before Peacekeeper Wars aired, so the first version I wrote had D’Argo (the Big D, not the little one) in it.  Canon changed, the backstory got away from me completely, the Youses Muses Gang was of little help when I needed their assistance the most, and the story got rewritten from scratch no less than four times because I was having trouble getting it to work out the way I wanted.  Suffice it to say, it is a stinkin’ miracle that I finally finished it … except the concept refused to leave me alone, so I should have known that I would complete it eventually.  That’s Farscape for you.

Enough blather.  Here we go. 

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Part 1

He knows it is a dream because his son is crying. 

Little D’Argo, having entered the universe in the midst of a full-bore raging battle, is always happiest when he has chaos to keep him amused.  The racket of energy blasts howling overhead is the heavy metal equivalent of a lullaby to their child.  Pulse weapon fire ricocheting wildly off the stones and burst into showering fireworks should serve as glittering entertainment, generating shrieks of pleasure and bubbling laughter.  Instead, his son is inconsolable, screaming out his distress in long, lung-wracking howls.  It provides the background theme of terror necessary to turn this vision into a full-fledged nightmare, and John Crichton is helpless to make it stop.  He plays the pre-ordained part, following the script that his subconscious has provided, and watches with dread fascination as the worst moment of his life approaches.  The crying goes on, intermixed with the coughs and howls that tear at his heart every bit as viciously as they are tearing at Little D’s throat. 

He runs the back of a grimy finger down the tear-streaked, flushed face of his son, and bends down to kiss him.  It is a last touch rather than an attempt to calm him.  When he straightens up, Aeryn is leaning in close so she can make herself heard. 

“Promise me!” she yells over the pounding of the cannon that the charrids have brought up in an attempt to hammer their way through the rock wall.  Each time a bolt hits, slivers of stone sail in slicing showers, one more threat to their safety in an already out of control situation.  There is another slamming impact, and she bends over, using her body as a shield to protect D’Argo.  Rock fragments rattle and chime against the blocks behind them.  Aeryn straightens and grabs the back of his neck with her free hand.  “You promise me you’ll be here!”

“I promise!”  He brushes a fast kiss across her lips.  The caress brings away the sharp taste of salt, underlain by the muted bitterness of ignited chakan oil and the metallic bite of scorched rock and sand.  He kisses her again, the touch every bit as fleeting as the first, and repeats his assurance.  “I promise.  And you promise me that you’ll keep your gorgeous head down and take care of the chubster.” 

She nods, and they scramble past each other, swapping places.  The rest of their group is doing the same thing, sorting themselves out into two groups.  At one end, John, Arlan, and six of the captain’s men crouch in a small huddle, preparing their weapons.  The remainder of the besieged group -- Aeryn, Yn’dlath, the two luxans, and the remaining eight Peacekeepers -- hand over their extra weapons and whatever cartridges they can spare, and then gather at the other end of the jumble of stone blocks. 

Aeryn lingers, gently bouncing a still screaming D’Argo with her left hand.  Her pulse pistol is in her right.  Mother and soldier, she cares for an infant and a weapon with equal familiarity.  She wears both personas comfortably, somehow managing to merge the two into a single amalgam of beauty, strength, compassion, and ruthlessness that sometimes defies logic.  He loves her so much that he can barely breathe for worrying about what the next few moments will bring.   

“I’m sorry,” he says.  The syllables emerge in a torturously slow nightmarish drawl, giving the remorse more time to etch its damage on his soul.  “I’m sorry.”  The slow motion words ooze into his dream the same way acid eats a fizzing pattern into flesh, leaving an agonizing trail in its wake.   

Aeryn’s reply passes more quickly, as though the dream-gods are fiddling with the recording’s Pause and Fast Forward settings.  It turns what should be a loving assurance into a high-pitched parody of an auctioneer’s delivery that lacks any hint of emotion.  “We made the decision together.  There is no way we could have predicted this.”  She looks at him for a moment, fast-forward rocking the baby, and then draws her hand down his cheek.  The remembered touch is too brief.  “I love you.” 

The replay speed returns to normal.  “No goodbyes,” he says.   

“No goodbyes,” she says, nodding.  “You hang on.  No matter how long it takes, you hang on.”   

There is a fast jump after that.  He doesn’t have to relive the first, terrifying bolt out from behind cover, or the way the soldier in front of him loses the entire top half of his head to a chance shot from the cannon.  There is no forced recall of the suicidal charge across the sand, tossing off wild shots at anything that moves behind the charrid lines in hopes that it will draw their attention.  Perhaps sleep has intervened for a time; he has no way of knowing.  As far as he can tell he simply jumps from the feel Aeryn’s fingers drifting out from under his when he pulls away, to the insane dash toward the welcoming maw of the tunnel, fountains of dirt showering up all around them because the charrids have taken the bait. 

The diversion, although pathetically small and insignificant, has worked.  From the amount of firepower being poured in their direction, he finds it tough to believe there is anything left to interfere with the main party’s retreat. 

He is in the middle of the pack.  Arlan and the comms sergeant are ahead of him, dragging a wounded soldier between them.  Behind him there are only two voices streaming out curses in Sebacean where there ought to be three.  He flicks a glance over his shoulder to see if it is because the third man is concentrating on running or if he’s been shot, and that’s when the nightmare constricts into a horrifying, tunnel-vision moment that slows to a standstill at the instant his life comes to an end. 

He catches the movement out of the corner of his eye, and turns his head to watch.  In the distance, the lithe figure sprints across the open ground that lies between the rocks where they had taken shelter and the transport pod.  She looks as though she is flying.  Black coat flapping behind her, long legs eating up the distance at a pace that would put an Olympic sprinter to shame, one arm curled protectively around the baby suspended in his sling, Aeryn is a vision of beauty in high speed motion.  The shot comes out of nowhere, precursor to an accelerating hail of fireworks.  The ball of energy streaks toward her with the single-minded purpose of a missile homing in on a target beacon.  It catches her square in the back.  Aeryn goes down in a slithering, face-first slide into the sand.  Even this far away he can see her feet fly up into the air, the momentum of her run nearly flipping her over end for end.  The boots come down, and she seems to burrow nose first into the sand, the baby beneath her body. 

He is powerless to scream as long as he is trapped in the nightmare. 

That is reserved for when he wakes up.   

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

The heap of stones stands in the midst of a wind-blasted sterile plain.  It is the last remnant of a structure that once loomed high, lording over metras of carefully tended water gardens and aquifer-fed forests that stretched further than the eye could see in every direction.  Where the royalty of a long-vanished species once picked their way carefully through tangles of succulent plants provided for no reason other than to be plucked and eaten at the residents’ leisure, there now lay overturned stones that have been hewn into hulking lumpish shapes by thousands of cycles of wind-blown sand.  The central monolith is little more than an irregular hillock, less than a quarter its original size.  It is buried beneath enough dirt that it is no longer recognizable for the structure it once was, diminished by collapse, folding in upon itself one level at a time, rumbling out notice of internal failure to an empty planet.

Where there once stood great halls, porticos, ramparts, and buttresses, now rests a lunatic’s labyrinth of lightless chambers, caves, dead-end corridors, and cavernous pits.  And for every motra of space above ground level, there is three times as much territory beneath.  What had been subterranean servant’s quarters, access tunnels for moving supplies, and a warren of storage areas extending eight levels below the ground floor has survived the eons far better than the structure above.  The lower levels, foundation for the palace, had been built with exceptional care.  The basement has held for the most part, resisting the rot and ruin that rains down above, providing a home to a species of small scuttling creatures with ten legs.  They are hairy, sightless from the perpetual darkness, and harmless, feeding on the molds and lichens that line the ancient chambers. 

The sun hammers mercilessly by day; the rain pounds down by night.  A peculiarity of landmasses and lunar cycles, the weather patterns never vary.  With sunset comes the rain, turning dust to slimy mud.  With full dark comes the first trickling seepage that will invade even the lowest levels, turning them into a foul, slick sewer running denches deep in a viscous soup of algae and mud.  The sides of the passageways are the first to give way to the insidious flood.  Small runnels ooze from the fissures overhead, surging downward to puddle and run sideways.  Depressions in the stone floors fill slowly at first, eventually picking up momentum until they overflow and the rivulets curl snakelike into the unending night of the tunnels.  They worm along the floors, sneak into the joints between the stone blocks, and disappear toward the next lower level, summoned into the vacuous belly of the ruins.  Each night as the downpour far overhead wears on arn after arn, the caverns begin to shower a stinking mucosal rain. 

When the stones begin to weep, the creature knows it is time to kill. 

The caverns have become home to a new resident.  This one is larger and heavier than the little ones that have lived here for hundreds of cycles.  Its size and shape are unsuited to the cramped quarters.  It scrambles after the small scuttling ones, finds them by touch, and then skewers them with one of its long metallic fangs.  It hunches over its kill in the dark, rips away the spindly legs, and then tears at the body with its teeth, snarling and coughing between mouthfuls.  Once finished, it huddles in upon itself for a brief time, arms wrapped around its midsection as if to suggest that it finds its meal unpalatable, and then leans over and spews up a portion, perhaps as an offering to whatever god sentenced it to this stooped over, sightless existence. 

This night, as always, it crouches in the small hollow that it has come to consider its bedroom, waiting for the quiet, hesitant trickles of water that will tell it that the time to kill is about to arrive.  At one time he had name.  He used to think of himself by a set of labels that had to do with his place among similar beings:  father, husband, son, friend.  The days of thinking of himself in that manner are over.  His identity is defined by his actions; his life has devolved into a mindless but painless existence that consists only of the present. 

When he comes back to his dank, dark home each morning, he thinks of himself as the Sleeper.  The night’s activities always leave him exhausted; the routine is reassuring in its sameness, requiring little thought.  He feels his way to the torrent that plunges out of the ceiling on the third level, stands beneath the pounding stream of water long enough to wash away the worst of the filth, and then clambers his way back up to his little hovel near the surface level in order to rest.  The Sleeper crawls into the rounded pocket that has been well padded with the clothes of his dead friends, curls up in his stoned-walled nest, and sleeps through the heat of the day, relying on the rains to wake him. 

When he slithers his way down to the lowest levels in search of food, he is the Hunter, chasing down spider-like creatures that he is thankful he will never see.  He doubts he could get himself to eat them if he knew what they looked like.  Their flesh is rubbery and acidic; he seldom manages to keep an entire meal in his stomach.  The Hunter doesn’t care about the revolting taste or that the food makes him sick; all that matters is that enough stays in his stomach to keep his body alive another night.

Sometimes he is the Explorer, who spends his idle arns working his way methodically from one end of the maze to the other, gradually memorizing every twist and turn, and every lethal hole in the floor.  The Explorer gathers the knowledge that can be used to kill his pursuers if they decide to come in after him again.  There was a day when the ones who live on the surface, no longer willing to come into the tunnels themselves, tried sending a Brindiss hound in after him.  It was the Explorer who knew how to trick the beast, and the animal now lies with all the other dead at the bottom of one of the deep pits:  a dead guard dog steadfastly watching over the rest of the dead. 

The Explorer has a twin brother who puts in an appearance from time to time.  This is the Idiot, and he occasionally gets lost and spends arns or even days finding his way out.  But it was the Idiot who accidentally located a well-hidden exit leading out of the underground universe.  When the ones who live above bombarded the heap of rock in an attempt to seal him in, the Idiot was the one who knew the route out, and so he earned a place of respect among everything else that he becomes.

And then there is the other one, the one that goes outside at night hoping that it will find some measure of peace in the ritual of stalking those who are responsible for his current existence.  That part of his life has no label.  When he is outside, he is a held breath, a quick furtive movement, silence, a painstakingly slow crawl across open ground.  He becomes something that he doesn’t wish to identify; he transforms himself into a relentless desire to ease the ache in his heart, a never-ending quest to drown the memories in a shower of charrid blood, and the need to make them pay for what they have done.  He defines this creeping, crawling, wielder of weapons with shadowy, indistinct images that refuse to bear a name.  When he goes outside, he becomes the sterile ground beneath him, the relentless rain falling from above, and the next target for his vengeance.  He becomes death. 

He prefers to become each of these things in succession because the present doesn’t carry the weight of his past.  When he is so careless as to remember, the memories cause him to kneel in the middle of a lightless passageway and curl in on himself, howling and weeping out his grief, sometimes choosing to smash his head or hands against the unfeeling stone because that sort of pain is preferable to the type that blossoms inside his chest.  Concentrating on the next several microts of his existence keeps the phantoms at bay.  It allows him to forget the details of a plan gone desperately wrong.  If he can keep himself balanced carefully in the midst of now, looking neither forward nor back, he doesn’t have to recall a lithe, running figure taking a energy charge square in the back, or how she had slithered face first into the dust, every vestige of energy, strength, and beauty forever stripped away from the beloved body by an enemy’s weapon.  If he can transform himself into nothing more than what he is going to do for the next arn, he doesn’t have to remember that she had been carrying their son when she got hit. 

“Oh, god.” 

It is a quiet supplication, a whispered howl of self-recrimination both for the original rotten plan and for being so weak as to allow the memories to get loose.  He sinks down, ignoring the cold creep of water working its way through the worn knees of his pants, and rocks forward and back, trying to stop the agony that expands outward from the center of his being.  It takes dozens of microts to get it under control.  The past is harshly jammed back into the place where he refuses to look, the future is shoved aside because it is irrelevant, and the numbing calm of the present settles over him.  Emptiness is preferable to the aching loneliness that began the moment he saw them die. 

Peace of mind restored, he sprawls face first into the wet and slithers his way forward, fingers searching for the edge of the lethal sinkhole that begins on this level.  He feels the air moving first, and then picks up the faint smell of rotting meat.  He ignores the wafting odors.  There is nothing to be done about the stench.  Shifting to the right, he first locates and then begins to squirm along the narrow shelf of rock that still clings to that side of the wall.  Leather passes over wet, grimy stone with a gritty susurrence that reminds him of the slide of a knife blade across a sharpening stone.  It conjures up thoughts of a sunlit kitchen, cooking smells, a cup of coffee at his elbow, laughter and conversation while he sharpens knives for his mother.

“No, no, no, no, no!” he whispers viciously, and bumps his head against the stone to help make the memories stop.  Those days are gone forever.  Right now he is the Crawler, working his way carefully to the end of the ruined corridor where he will find the slanting spill of rock and begin the climb to the surface.  It is night.  The tunnels have begun to stream with water.  It is time to kill.  Nothing else matters. 

The journey is completed easily and without a visit from the Idiot.  He draws to a halt at the Waiting Spot, which is located two intersections from the mouth of the tunnel.  This is where he sits every night until the trickles to turn to a steadier pattering flood.  It is critical that he not emerge too soon.  If he does, the ground will have softened enough to bear tracks, but will not have had time to turn to the soupy slime that oozes into the depressions fast enough to hide the marks of his passage.  When the slow drip on the top of his head develops into a steady, stone-warmed shower -- not entirely unpleasant despite the gritty particles of eroded palace that are carried with it -- that is when he knows that it is safe to begin his nightly excursion on the planet’s surface. 

The sidling passage through the cleft in the rocks is always the worst.  It is the only thing that keeps the charrids from finding his only remaining entrance, and it is also the most dangerous portion of his nightly transition from cave dweller to skulking seeker of the enemy.  Standing upright for the first time in arns, shuffling sideways with the rock walls brushing both his chest and his back, there is no way he can defend himself if they have managed to track him to this spot and are waiting just outside the passage.  Some nights he goes through all in a rush, relying on surprise to give him an advantage if there is someone waiting on the other side.  Tonight he takes his time, stopping often to listen for errant splashes in the steady drumming of the rain, and to sniff the moisture soaked air.  Charrids reek worse than he does.  If they’re out there, he’ll smell them. 

There is no one waiting for him.  He eases out from between the stones, sniffs several times just to be sure, and then drops low so he will be harder to see, and disappears into the rain. 

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

It takes half the night to locate and kill the first of his prey.  He knows in a hazy, poorly thought out manner that it is due to a combination of things.  The lack of food is exacting a harsh toll on his body; he is becoming weaker with each passing day.  It takes a full extra arn to reach the special mud hole that is his first destination, and by the time he gets there he is gasping for breath and has begun to shake.  He eases into the glutinous, sticky morass and begins to roll around, making sure he is thoroughly coated from head to foot, but also relieved to be lying down. 

This is the secret the charrids haven’t been able to discover.  Some facet of this particular mud, possibly a mineral or low-level radioactivity, masks him from their sensor sweeps.  As long as he is well coated, he can’t be detected by their scanning equipment.  The first time they had missed him, it had been an accident.  He had fallen into the bog while being chased, and a patrol had gone right past without noticing that he was lying there with nothing but his nose and his eyes showing.  He has started each night at this spot ever since.  Tonight he counts off an extra sixty microts to rest, and then forces himself to keep moving.  There is work to be done. This is not the right time to give in to weakness. 

The other problem he runs into is that the charrids have yet again tightened the defenses along their perimeter in an attempt to stop the nocturnal attacks.  There are thousands of them however, with metras of encampment to patrol.  He knows that if he is stealthy and takes his time, he will eventually find a way in.  It takes several arns and more energy than he can afford to expend, but as expected, he discovers a weak point in their defenses.  After prowling back and forth for half an arn to make sure he isn’t overlooking a hidden observation post, he takes out three of the guards in quick succession, creating a large enough gap that he’ll stand a good chance of getting in and out without being caught.  The guards go down as easily as all the others he has killed over the past days.  Charrid armor is made to defend against pulse blasts and other energy weapons.  It isn’t designed to stop a knife. 

One by one, he hauls them to where he knows there is a gully deep enough to conceal three bodies for several arns.  He lingers long enough to carve his mark into each of their bodies, and then slips through the opening in their lines and goes in search of his next victim. 

An officer dies next, caught strolling in the shadows behind a building instead of out under the lights where it is safer.  The excitement has been mounting ever since he killed the first guard.  He feeds on it, drawing strength and energy from the adrenalin surge, and this time he yanks the knife so hard he takes the officer’s head right off.  The body spews out a final fountain of gore before slumping to the ground with a splash.  The head, still in its helmet, wobbles an erratic course into the halo of illumination beneath one of the lights.  He freezes.  If anyone notices the gruesome football, he will be discovered.  With his knife clenched between his teeth, he worms his way through the puddles, snares the prize with an outstretched hand, and then quickly slithers back into the dark. 

Someone shouts, and he dives into the shadows near the base of a building, squirming down into the mud.  But it’s only one charrid calling for another to wait for it, and they hurry on by, heads down against the rain. 

The prey veers away from the better lit areas of the compound, taking a shortcut.  Perhaps they believe they are safe because there are two of them.  They don’t notice the dripping shadow that slides along behind them.  The first one is easy; its head comes off just like the officer’s.  The second has time to turn, Rastafarian locks swinging, and he lunges in with the point of his blade, driving it under the lip of the helmet with all the strength he can muster.  It staggers back, spraying blood with each breath. 

He knocks it over backwards and kicks the helmet off.  Anger snarls up at him through a froth of blood and saliva; fury and dismay glare at him between gargling, pain-filled attempts to sound an alarm. 

“Don’t go away,” he says, and leans on the knife hilt.  It slides home with a crunch, lodged in the charrid’s spine.  The prey refuses to die.  Incapable of moving, it continues to watch him with furious dirt-colored eyes. 

Revelation interrupts its choking attempts to breathe.  The charrid has figured out how he has been hiding from their sensors.  He allows it to go on living for a little longer, basking in the knowledge that this one will have time to anticipate its own death.

For the moment, it is the dead charrid that interests him most.  His hands fly through the small carriers attached to its armor, searching for one particular item.  Spare ammunition, bits of equipment, and a hailstorm of personal items are flung into the mud.  A fast search inside the chest plate brings up a ractor knife.  He grins with delight, tucks it in his belt, and goes on searching.  What he wants isn’t there.  He scrambles on hands and feet to the dying one and tries again.  This time he finds it straight away:  field rations.  Rummaging through the packets, he comes up with half a fistful of foodcubes.  They’re the only thing the charrids eat that he can stomach.  He crouches in the rain, watching for any sign that he is about to be discovered, and wolfs them down in a hurry, choking almost as often as he manages to swallow.         

Once he is finished with his snack, he leans over the dying charrid so he can look into its eyes.  “Sorry I can’t stay for dessert and coffee.”  The ractor knife makes a quiet hum when it’s turned on.  It is inaudible against the steady rush of the rain.  “No, don’t thank me for stopping by.  It was my pleasure.” 

He claps a hand over the charrid’s mouth, and slashes hard and deep with the ractor knife, carving his message into its forehead.  Its eyes bulge; it gargles, and fights to scream.  Blood foams out around the blade that remains lodged in its throat.  He checks his work, goes back to make one stroke clearer, and then straightens up.  He leaves the same message every time.  It doesn’t matter that they won’t understand it; it is something that he needs to do, an offering to the ghosts that rule his existence.  The message is about what should have been, and what was taken away from him. 

It reads:  J+A=3.

The charrid continues to watch him with bewildered, dying eyes.  It seems confused by the onset of death.  He hunkers down with his forearms resting on his knees, the rain beating fast and hard on his shoulders and back, and watches it die.  Cold trickles run down his back at the same pace that the bloody rivulets streak down the creases in the charrid’s skin.  Its breaths become more irregular.  It chokes more frequently, battling back with increasing difficulty after each bout of strangled coughing. 

A stream of cold water snakes behind his ear, soaks his collar, and then burrows under his jacket.  He shivers and looks around.  He has no idea how long he has been sitting here.  The rain has begun to wash away his layer of clinging camouflage.  He sets the ractor knife down on the charrid’s chest, lies down, and rolls in the mud.  Three rolls way from the body and three rolls back is enough; he is well coated.  Experience has taught him that the new mud will keep the special mud from washing off. 

When he gets to his knees, the charrid is dead. 

It takes four tries and a boot placed firmly on the corpse’s neck before he manages to get his blade loose.  He slithers away, putting distance between himself and the bodies just in case they are found.  Once he is safely away, he stops and tries to remember how much time has passed.  He is Cinderella for several microts, counting off the arns in his head to make sure he hasn’t stayed out too late.  If he is late reaching the rocks, he dies.  The night’s activities tangle into a blur of motion, effort, and revenge.  He has no idea how much time has passed, and decides it would be safest to begin the trek home.

He comes across two more on his way out of the encampment:  a female and a small one.  It seems right that they should die as well.  It’s justice.  He slinks along behind them, waiting for the right moment.  The female stops in a stupid place in order to talk to the small one; they are standing in a shadow, hidden from the sight.  It is the perfect place for an attack.  He crouches next to a stack of containers, soaked and shivering, and goes on watching them.  He can hear bits and pieces of their chatter.  The small prey doesn’t like walking through the puddles.  She picks the little one up and begins to carry it, sacrificing the ability to defend both herself and her small one. 

They walk away, headed toward the light and noise of the central barracks area, and he doesn’t move.  One portion of his brain is screaming for him to run after them, to kill the little one first so the female can know what it is like to watch her offspring die, and to do something excessive with the two bodies.  He grasps the knife so tightly that his entire arm begins to shake, and conjures up thoughts of dismemberment, of placing limbs and organs and pieces in patterns that will tell a tale of what these creatures have stolen from him.  The rip and tear of metal slicing through muscle and sinew will feel glorious.  Ecstasy is the deep grating vibrations of sharpened hydrosteel glancing off bone. 

There will be no jubilant evisceration of females or children tonight.  A different portion of his mind takes over before he can move forward, commanding him to stop.  The soft, always-collected voice of a ghost speaks to him from his memories.  It urges him to retain a vestige of the person he had once been, not to cut the last tie to the passion they had shared.  He can make no choice other than to obey her.  He goes on kneeling in a deepening puddle long after the prey has disappeared, the knife resting against his knee, consumed by the emptiness. 

Their life together wasn’t supposed to end this way.  Not in the dark and the cold and the wet.  Not apart.  Not so soon.  He huddles against the downpour, warm salty trickles mixing with the water on his cheeks, and misses her.

In the end, it is the promise he made her that drives him to his feet and sends him stumbling into the night.  It doesn’t matter that she is dead, or that no one knows he is alive and needs to be rescued.  He vowed that he would hang on.  Letting go of his promise means finally letting go of her, and he can’t bring himself to do that.  Not yet.  And there’s the fact that Aeryn is still here.  Her body is out there in the dark, little D’Argo forever pinned beneath her, somewhere close to the landing area and the scorched hulk of the transport pod.  By this time they’ve both been hammered into the mud by the passing vehicles, possibly mangled, either rotting from the wet or desiccated by the sun.  They’re gradually becoming part of the landscape. 

They never say goodbye.  It’s a rule he's not about to change now.  “I’ll never leave you,” he whispers to her.  “Never.”  And with the new vow made, he blends into the night.   

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

[KernilCrash]

Part 2

It is a fitful sleep, full of brief vivid dreams sprinkled with half-waking moments that are often more confusing than what he sees while he is asleep.  He thinks and dreams at the same time, one sliding into the next, carrying bits and pieces of his thoughts into the distorted universe of dreamland and transporting the skewed memories back into waking until he’s not sure where each one begins or ends.  In one of his more lucid moments he knows why it is happening.  He is wet, chilled to the bone and shivering so violently that it is making him nauseous.  It is the involuntary tremors that continue to pull him out of the rapidly shifting, surreal visits to his past, repeatedly spilling him back into the harsh truth of a lumpy layer of clothing beneath him, unrelenting dark, and a body that can no longer summon enough energy to stay warm.  Seven or eight stale foodcubes wolfed down while kneeling over a dying charrid are not enough to fuel his body for an entire day.  His den will not warm until late afternoon.  Until that happens, the best he can do is burrow under several layers of jackets, curl up like a hibernating chipmunk, and do his best sleep away the arns.

Mostly he dreams of food:  sliding from one remembered feast to another, jumping from Thanksgivings when he had stuffed himself with his mother’s cooking until he was sure he was going to explode, to bizarre multi-cultural meals in the Center Chamber that went on for arns amidst camaraderie and chatter; from the simple pleasure of peanut butter eaten straight out of the jar, onward through a half-consciously assembled menu of sokrans, pizza, fried grohlak, and his mother’s beef stew, all of it washed down with the easy, delightful slide of chilled milk.  His stomach grumbles, letting him know he’s awake, and then he sinks into another dreamed recreation of a celebratory meal when the table had been in danger of collapsing under the weight of the food. 

His father comes to sit beside him in his rock-walled hovel at one point, scrambling awkwardly over the lip of stone and spilled sand, hampered by the bag from McDonald’s he is carrying in one hand.  The smell of the french fries is a siren’s call, hearkening back to a life he cannot hope to resume.  It is the rich fatty smell of a fryer vat heart attack, of mouth wateringly empty calories, and of sitting in the car digging through paper-wrapped bundles in a sack, squabbling over who ordered what.  It is the remembered odor of a simpler time when his stomach was always full and choosing between life and death was a philosophical abstract.  There is no hardship associated with the hot starchy fragrance:  no loss, no aching need for someone who is gone forever, no hatred, and no desire to kill just to bolster his desire to live.  It is from a time when the simple pleasure of going for a walk beneath open skies and sunlight didn’t mean losing everyone he loves.     

Jolting awake, he licks his lips, swallows hard against the emptiness in his stomach, and tries to ignore the way his entire body aches for food.  It’s a low level variety of torture.  Every cell screams quietly for sustenance.  If he didn’t have other things to think about the constant discomfort would quickly consume him.  But there are greater agonies to occupy his mind.  Hunger can be ignored as long as he has hatred on which to center his attention. 

“Frelling charrids,” Rygel says suddenly, floating alongside him.  “You can’t trust those despicable creatures.  I’m not going with you.  If they claim to be a defense garrison, then they’re lying.  The force on that planet is ten times larger than a standing garrison requires.” 

“Yn’dlath is satisfied,” he hears himself saying.  They are standing at the entrance to the hangar bay waiting for the rest of the group to arrive.  “If someone as paranoid as an eidelon says it’s safe, then it’s probably safe.”

“Probably safe,” Sparky repeats in his most scathing Dominar’s drawl.  “Probably isn’t the same thing as definitely.  Yn’dlath is young, and he’s inexperienced.  If you are determined to walk straight into what I know is a trap, then at least leave the baby with me.”

Aeryn pauses with one foot on the lowest step of the transport pod stairs, and turns to look at them, one eyebrow twitching upward in curiosity.  The baby is resting comfortably in the crook of her arm, carried with all the familiarity of a pulse rifle.  She has adapted to the idiosyncrasies of motherhood with a speed that leaves him reeling.  Little fazes her.  Diapers, breast feeding, waking repeatedly in the middle of the night, a brief bout of colic that Aeryn diagnosed as too much of a particular spice in her own diet:  everything is taken in stride the same way she approaches impending battles.  Motherhood is nothing more than another campaign to be plotted out in advance and executed with a minimum of fuss. 

Her relaxed stride crosses the six motras between them.  “Rygel, we asked the charrids about the extra troops,” she says, repeating what has already been discussed a number of times.  “The planet was a marshalling point for their forces.  They had just finished assembling a battle group here when the armistice was signed.” 

“Lies,” Rygel grumbles.  “What about the sensor anomalies Pilot was picking up?  What about those?  No one has explained that yet.” 

They stand silently for several moments because Rygel is right.  The anomalies haven’t been fully explained.  Finally Aeryn says, “The readings are consistent with a force barrier, as they claim.”  She doesn’t sound entirely convinced. 

Rygel refuses to give up.  “This planet is thousands of metras from where the fighting took place.  It is a strategically insignificant collection of irradiated mud and foul weather.  There is no reason for them to have erected a defensive barrier that only protects against ground assaults unless they are hiding something.  It is all lies, and you won’t know why they are lying until it is too late.” 

Arlan strolls by, most of his attention trained on inspecting the pulse rifle he is carrying.  He swerves over to where they are standing long enough to toss in his opinion.  Every species in the sector is still a bit jumpy at this stage, the Peacekeeper officer points out.  It is too soon after the signing of the armistice for the inhabitants of every planet to be acting as though they expect the peace to last.  The charrids are no different than anyone else.  If they’re acting a bit furtive or suspicious, it is because they are acting like every other race at this end of the galaxy.  He reminds them that Yn’dlath has spent most of the day meditating, testing whatever psychic ripples it is that he relies on for his special insight, and has declared both the planet and surrounding solar system safe.   

The fact that Moya and those on board her are on a mission of peace get tossed into the mix at some point.  Everyone knows it’s irrelevant, and yet it keeps coming up, gradually influencing their opinions.  Aside from the small contingent of Peacekeepers, the leviathan carries only a handful of luxans, Yn’dlath, and a cargo bay full of message beacons to be dropped off on every inhabited planet between Arnessk and Hyneria.  Under contract to the newly formed Eidelon Council of Priests, their job is to spread word of the armistice across this section of the galaxy.  It has taken a quarter cycle of jumping from one planet to the next in order to reach this particular spot on the outer rim of the Hynerian Empire, stopping at each world just long enough for Yn’dlath to work his magic.  They are no more than fifteen solar days worth of planet hopping from Hyneria itself, and the entire trip has taken place without a hint of violence. 

The dream-debate continues, seldom making any sense.  Bits and pieces of the original discussion whirl around, clash, reform into surreally absurd combinations that carry even less logic than the actual argument, and once again they reach the worst possible conclusion.  Lulled into complacency by Arlan’s and Yn’dlath’s assurances that all is well, blinded by the seductive idea that the peace can be maintained by a handful of eidelons, they ignore Rygel’s insistent claims of duplicity on the part of the charrids and decide to take Little D with them rather than entrust him to someone else’s care. 

It will be the worst decision of their lives. 

He wants to change how it happened.  He strains against the grip of sleep to convince Aeryn to leave the baby behind.  That’s all that he needs.  It is futile to try to get her to stay aboard Moya; there is no way he can prevent her from coming with him.  And it isn’t necessary to go to that extreme anyway.  He is sure that everything will work out differently if she doesn’t take D’Argo down to the planet.  She will be able to run faster if she isn’t carrying the extra weight and has both hands free.  Little D will be safe and happy aboard Moya with Chiana, Rygel, and Pilot to watch over him.  Aeryn won’t die.  D’Argo won’t die. 

All he has to do is say the correct words and he will have a reason to live.  All he has to do is speak, saying whatever is necessary to convince her that they were wrong the first time around. 

Aeryn smiles over her shoulder at him, and runs up the steps to the transport pod still carrying the baby. 

“No,” he cries at last into the mud-caked leather beneath his head.  “Don’t go.”  The plea comes far too late to save her, and then he is asleep again.   

He dives over the top of the barricade, nearly brains himself on a large boulder, hits the sand in an ungainly sprawl and slams shoulder-first into a sand-dusted rock.  His lungs and his legs are on fire from the desperate, slogging run across the sand.  Aeryn is half a motra to one side, hunched over, protecting the baby; she had beaten him to cover by no less than one hundred microts.  She didn’t seem to have any difficulty running on the soft, shifting surface.  He wonders if it’s a Peacekeeper training thing or if he’s pitifully out of shape.  He hears an odd whine and crack in the distance.  The noise means that the charrid artillery is loosing another salvo. 

“Incoming!  Hit the deck!”  He flings himself on top of Aeryn, doing his best to protect her and the baby without crushing them.

“Look out!” someone yells a split second before Arlan comes sailing over the top of the stone, still firing even as he leaps for cover.  The black uniform tucks into a compact ball, hits the ground rolling.  The remainder of the squad follows in quick succession, in some cases landing on each other.  No one complains about getting squashed.  Everyone is too busy burrowing down into the sand, hands and arms over their heads.  They have no alternative except to ride out the deafening impacts and the hail of blasted stone and scorched sand. 

Ears ringing, he looks up.  Everyone is there and is unharmed.  They have all escaped from what was supposed to be a brief, peaceful ceremony with the commanders of the garrison.  Yn’dlath looks bewildered by the turn of events and the chaos raging around them, as though he thinks he should have been able to stop it from occurring. 

“That was a frelling magnificent plan!” one of the luxans yells over the accelerating crash of small weapons fire.  “Will someone tell me why we retreated away from the transport pod?”

“Because they were between us and it, and if we had tried rushing them we would have gotten our asses shot off?” he shouts back.  Another salvo slams into the hillside behind them.  Everyone ducks.  “Was that the right answer?  Do I get a gold star?” he asks when they raise their heads. 

The luxan glares at him the same way D’Argo always did whenever he didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or shoot him.  “That was very nice!  Now tell me how we’re going get out of here?”

Before he can put together an equally sarcastic response, Aeryn’s elbow digs into his ribs, a forceful reminder that he’s still lying on top of her.  She shoves him to one side and sits up.  She checks on the baby first, and then quickly dissembles her pulse pistol and blows the dirt and grit out of the pulse chamber, calm and focused in the midst of total chaos.  “Contact Pilot.  Have him send down some of the others in a luxan ship to get us out.” 

“All channels are being jammed,” the comms sergeant says.  “I can’t tell if I’m getting through.  We need to plan on getting out on our own or not at all.” 

“I vote for getting out on our own,” Arlan says, deliberately misinterpreting the sergeant’s final comment.  He grins broadly, snaps several shots in the direction of the charrid lines, and then ducks down again.  “What do you think?”

“Not at all has a certain attraction,” Aeryn yells back in cheerful sarcasm.  “Lots of sun, beautiful scenery, pleasant neighbors.  John likes planets.  We could build a home and stay here forever.” 

They are going to stay here forever, but not in the manner she meant. 

Up on the surface it is late afternoon.  The heat has made its way down through the layers of sand and stone, and he wakes to the unpleasant moist grasp of half-dried leather and oven-hot air.  He kicks off the layers of clothing he uses for covers, squirms his way onto his back, and sprawls with his arms and legs outstretched, basking in the heat.  If it were this warm all the time, he might be tempted to stay below ground until he starved to death.  The days and nights would merge into an unending stream of happier moments from his past, of what might have been if only they had not made one critical, moronic decision, and of the remembered days of laughter and love.  He would lie on his back while his body wasted away, treading forward and back in time through his life, until a final breath slid out of him, and he joined Aeryn in reality as well as in his dreams.

But it never stays warm.  In a few arns the sun will set, the ground will begin to cool, and the increasingly cold drizzle will insinuate its way into his lair.  So for now he stares into the dark, eyes fixed on a stone ceiling he has never seen, and drifts, in the end making the transition from waking to sleep so smoothly that it tricks him into thinking the repetitive vision is real this time.

The charrids have left, gone who knows where.  He can tread his way openly across the sun-baked plain without worry.  Powdery dirt puffs out from under his boots with every step; miniature dust clouds rising up to coat his clothes and skin with flour-fine grit.  From boot soles to mid-thigh he is encased in a tenuous shell of light brown; parched soil showers down as fast as it roils up, dirt replacing dirt with each footfall.  The sun is equally merciless.  It hammers against his head and shoulders, doing its best to turn him into the same inconsequential sand as everything else on this planet.  He smears the heel of a hand across his face, wiping away the crawling streams of sweat, and comes away with a fistful of dust instead of moisture.  He is losing substance already.  If he doesn’t hurry, he is going to crumble into the landscape before he can reach them. 

He looks down at the ground in front of his feet.  The bones are there, half buried in the sand.  One tall, one small, the larger skeleton curled protectively around the tiny one that lies tucked in beneath its ribcage.  He tries to lift them, and they crumble in his hands.  One at a time the bones turn to nothingness, spilling from his fingers faster than he can move to catch them.  He lunges forward in desperation, trying to at least save the skulls so he will have something to remember them by, and they melt into the sand. 

The wind howls across the barren expanse, crying out a mournful keening of loss and emptiness.  It turns the entire landscape to swirling dust clouds, and the desiccated remnants of his family are gone forever.

Sand rattles against his chest.  He turns his head away from the tiny stinging fusillade, shielding his eyes.  That is the moment when he remembers that this is a dream.  He visits this spot almost every day in his sleep, treading the same ground each time, never coming up with anything more than a fistful of air and an ache in his chest that would be more than enough to kill him if he were awake.  When he ducks his head to the side, taking his eyes off the indentation where Aeryn’s body has lain for so many days, that’s when he knows he is dreaming.  If he were awake, nothing as insignificant as a little windborne sand could convince him to tear his gaze away from that rapidly fading mark. 

A pair of boots scrunches across parched gravel and sand.  He rises to his feet and turns to face her, waiting for her to speak.  Dream or no dream, at least he will get to hear her voice.  Aeryn is as beautiful as the first day he met her.  Death has been kind to her.  Today she is dressed in the black t-shirt instead of a long sleeved shirt, and her hair hangs free, drifting across her shoulders in dark heavy waves when she leans to one side in order to shift the baby to a more comfortable position in the crook of her arm.  Aeryn smiles at him, and speaks.  She says the same words every time; the dialogue never varies.  She stretches out her free hand, inviting him to place his hand in hers, and says, “Time to come home, John.  Come with us.”

When he reaches for her, she’s gone. 

He wakes scrabbling for Aeryn’s hand, eager to feel the strength and warmth of her grip one more time, trying to grasp the phantom touch before it fades along with the comforting embrace of sleep.  It’s a rotten way to wake up.  He rolls over once, draws his knees up to his chest so he’ll fit out the opening, and tumbles out of the sleeping hollow, hitting the stone floor of the passageway with a breath-jarring jolt.  His skin tingles unpleasantly in the aftermath of the dream; it’s a nauseating crawling sensation that feels as if his clothes are infested with millions of bugs.  Between the light-headed disorientation that comes from waking too abruptly, the buzzing headache that never seems to go away unless he finds something to eat, and an overall weariness of living, he feels like absolute crap. 

He crouches, one arm on a knee, chin resting on his forearm, and stares into the nothingness that is his home.  A furtive remnant of his dream lingers, tracing an eerie chill down the back of his neck and his spine.  It refuses to be banished even though he’s awake.  If he closes his eyes and concentrates, he can feel her kneeling beside him, hidden in the dark.  This sort of thing has happened plenty of times in the past, but never with such intensity.  When he holds his breath, he can almost hear the soft whoosh of her breathing that he had become accustomed to hearing in the middle of the night.  He never tired of waking to find her snuggled in against his back, one arm draped across his ribs, the warm air of her exhalations tickling the back of his neck.  He would lie awake for arns, simply listening, feeling, and reveling in the fact that they were together at last.

Tonight he can’t stop himself.  “Aeryn?” he whispers into the echoing emptiness of the ruins.  He receives the answer that logic and reason tell him to expect.  Silence. 

“Aeryn?” he calls more loudly, and the response is the same.  It gets out of control after that.  He is on his feet without any memory of when or how he got up, moving forward without caution, yelling her name again and again, as if decibels alone could bring her back.  “AERYN!” he screams finally, using up an entire lungful of air on the desperate plea, and then sinks down, huddles in on himself as protection against the blackness, and listens to the echoes of his own voice fading into the distance.

For the first time since it happened, he feels as though she truly is gone.  His mind has been playing its own little devious game until now, veering away from the truth, only peeking at the bleakness that will never end, and then leading him off into a semi-dazed existence where he doesn’t have to face that she is never coming back.  The grief has been real, the knowledge of the loss clear and sharp, and yet he has been holding a portion of himself back, leaving the equivalent of a small child cowering in a closet, convinced that there will be no such thing as monsters provided he doesn’t open the door. 

The door is open; the truth more unbearable than any of the dozen or so monsters he has faced over the past cycles.  He rocks forward until his forehead rests against the stone floor, finding solace in the touch of the unforgiving surface.  It is restful like that, hunched over in the dark, folded in on himself so that the empty hollow in his gut no longer feels like an intestinal black hole.  He could easily stay there forever, listening to the tiny pings and grumbles of the settling structure, until he becomes as much a permanent fixture as everything else underground.   

A scent infiltrates its way along the floor, driven forward on a snaking river of cooler air.  The metallic tang of individual rain drops splashing onto hot pavement catches at the back of his throat.  Like the dreamed fragrance of french fries, this is a smell from his past.  It brings with it the far away thunder grumble of an oncoming storm, the hiss and roar of wind tossed leaves, and the slapping wood-on-wood crack of the porch door as his mother steps out to call for him to come in. 

Somewhere close by it is raining. 

He gets to his feet in slow, tired stages, hands pushing on his knees like his grandfather used to do when he had been sitting for too long, and considers his options.  It will take one or two arns before the underground seepage begins.  There is time to get to the lowest level and search for a scuttling, fast-moving meal.  He needs the protein if he intends to go on.  But tonight, it doesn’t seem worth it.  Instead, he heads for the one place that against all logic brings him some peace of mind.

He takes the shortest route down to the third level, picking his way cautiously through the rubble littering the steeply sloped ramp.  He strides with more confidence once he’s on level ground, taking full advantage of the rare opportunity to walk upright like a human.  His fingers trail along the right wall, keeping track of the openings with an ease born of familiarity.  When the sixth hallway branches off, he slows, moving forward with more care, counts off another eight steps, and then drops to his hands and knees and inches forward until he reaches the edge of what he thinks of as the Bottomless Pit. 

This is his graveyard.  Arlan and his men rest far below.  He had been in a rush when he had stripped them of their clothing and everything else that might be of use, and had tumbled them into the depths.  They had made the freefall descent without the benediction of a service or any sort of heart-felt last words.  There are over a dozen charrids down there as well, killed during the first days when they had tried sending patrols in after him.  Body armor, pulse weapons, and scanning equipment hadn’t worked well in the tight confines of the tunnels, and their search lights had only served to warn him that they were coming.  He had found the best hiding places during those desperate days, sliding out to grab the rare straggler, learning to use a knife because it was silent.

At first he hadn’t wanted to dump the charrids in the same hole as Arlan and the others.  It seemed sacrilegious in some way.  But in the end, when he couldn’t find a second hole that was deep enough to swallow the dozen or so bodies, he had come to see it as a tribute to the soldiers who had died in the diversion meant to save Aeryn and the others.  Each time he comes here, he makes an effort to remember each of the honored dead one at a time, taking time to envision their faces, providing the only memorial they will ever receive.  He does it again, counting them off on his fingers so he won’t overlook anyone. 

The first two soldiers had gone down before any of the group had reached the entrance to the tunnel.  Number three was the wounded man Arlan and the comms sergeant had been dragging between them.  He had died shortly after Arlan had dropped him in order to haul a screaming, struggling human away from the sight of his dead family.  Four was the comms sergeant, who had been crushed under tons of rock during the third bombardment on the tunnel entrances.  The last two enlisted men had fought on tenaciously despite the ridiculous odds, using up every last bit of ammunition in an effort to keep the charrids out.  In the end they had resorted to knives and bare hands, only to be overwhelmed by a wave of armored bodies. 

And finally, there was Arlan.  He had hung on until the end of the second day, dying slowly of the wounds he had sustained while dragging a senseless civilian past the dead body of one of his own men. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers toward where Arlan’s body lies rotting at the bottom of the pit.  “You should have done your job instead of saving me.”  Clubbed into unconsciousness by the barrel of Arlan’s pulse pistol, he had survived the carnage because he had missed the worst of the battle.  He had awakened to find himself stuffed into a small alcove, two dead charrids in the passageway beyond, and with Arlan sitting propped against a wall nearby, well on his way to dying.   

Against every one of his hard-learned prejudices and expectations, he had liked the Peacekeeper captain very much.  The first time he caught himself seeking out Arlan’s company, he had blamed on the recent loss of his best friend.  Arlan was basically human, he had told himself; it was male companionship that drew him to Arlan the same way he had once wound up sitting outside Crais’ cell.  The days had passed in increasingly comfortable camaraderie, however, and the time had come when he had been forced to admit that he liked Arlan for his sense of humor, his intelligence, and the relaxed manner in which he wielded his authority.  That was the day he had begun thinking of Arlan as his friend. 

It had modified the way he viewed all Peacekeepers.  He still hated the repressive military regime and the decadent, autocratic ruling authority.  But after living side by side with the group assigned to accompany Yn’dlath, seeing the pride they took in resuming their traditional role as true peace keepers, he had finally begun to see the individuals inside the look-alike clothing.  Regimented, emotionally repressed, trained to follow orders without question, they had shown him that they could still be decent people if given half a chance. 

He rests his cheek on his arm, shifts his hips to one side so the rounded outcrop of rock isn’t digging into his pelvis, and remembers.  It is quiet.  The scent drifting up from the rotting bodies has begun to remind him of charcoal seared steaks on the grill.  He derives solace from their silent company, even if they are out of his reach.  He closes his eyes for an instant, and suddenly he is back where he belongs, striding through bronze-walled curving corridors, breathing clean, well-filtered air in the gentle yellowish light.

Laughter echoes toward him as he approaches the treblin side cells on Tier Eight.  With the exception of one higher pitched voice, the chuckles are all male, deeper rumbles providing a bass background to the lighter melody of a triumphant outburst from Aeryn.  He turns the corner already certain what he will find.  They are playing the card game again, the one he can’t seem to master.  Arlan, Aeryn, the comms sergeant, and three others sit at the table in Arlan’s quarters; five others are hovering over the players, watching with cheerful, avid interest.  Aeryn loses the next hand as he approaches the group, flings down the last of her cards in disgust and laughs again, accepting the loss easily. 

A burst of jealousy twists his stomach into an aching, hardened knot.  Aeryn never laughs so often or so readily when she’s with him.  Then she looks up from the game as he comes to a stop behind Arlan and the jealousy is gone.  Aeryn doesn’t look at anyone else in the universe the way she looks at him. 

“I hope you’re kickin’ their butts,” he says, trying to make up for the flash of envy.  Even after several lessons and being walked through more than a dozen hands, he still can’t figure out who is winning and losing.  The deck they use has fourteen suits, each one representative of a Peacekeeper rank.  To them the heap of cards in the middle looks like an alphabet spelling out a tale of pleasant recreational warfare.  To him it looks like a pile of oversized confetti.

Arlan answers the question.  “She’s killing us,” he says while gathering in the cards to deal another hand.

“Do you need me?” Aeryn asks.  All of her attention is focused on him.  That won’t change unless he releases her in some way. 

“Nope.  All’s quiet.  The drool factory is sleeping for once.  I just came up to see what’s going on.” 

She nods, satisfied, and lowers her eyes to see what she’s been dealt.  He watches one of her eyebrows twitch and knows instantly that she has a whopper of a hand.  No one else at the table seems to notice the telltale reaction.  He wanders around to stand behind her, still trying to make some sense out of this game.  It is over before he can begin to decipher what is going on.  Aeryn is gleefully ruthless.  The rest of the players take their defeat like soldiers, which is to say that there are lots of groans and bitching.  Arlan tosses his cards in the air, capitulating long before the hand is over. 

The cards flutter down in lively patterns, turning into butterflies mid-descent.  They swarm around him, battering lightly at his head and arms, and he wakes. 

The butterflies turn out to be water drops.  It’s raining below ground. 

It’s time to go.  He has charrids to kill. 

The enormous mound of rubble at the far end of the corridor takes him up two levels, hands and feet finding their way from block to block easily after so many nights’ practice.  Sand and rock fragments grind sourly under his boots; the sound catches at his inner ear and makes the saliva run fast in his mouth, imitating hunger.  He ignores it, doubles back toward the center of the labyrinth until he finds the stairway, and then bounds up three more levels before cutting across to what he thinks might once have been a kitchen.  From there he slithers down a vertical access shaft to the level below.  This route only works on the way out.  In the morning he will use an entirely different series of intricate twists and turns to get home. 

By the time he reaches the Waiting Spot, the torrent coming from the ceiling is already at full volume.  He’s running behind schedule.  He’ll have to hurry. 

Just the same, he takes his time approaching the surface, stopping often to listen.  From this point to his exit takes him along a straight, unobstructed passageway.  He was late getting in this morning, slowed down by fatigue and hunger.  By the time he had finally wormed his way through the opening and crawled into the safety of his lair, he had been pushing the absolute limit of safety.  If they have managed to track him to the fissure that is concealed behind several massive blocks of stone, they may be waiting for him with anything from a Brindiss hound to a sonic ascendancy cannon.  There is nothing they won’t do if it means they can bring the nocturnal attacks to an end. 

All is quiet.  He eases forward to the mouth of the corridor, stops to listen one more time, and then lowers himself to the floor of the cave-like entry way, still wary.  He crouches low, listening, twitching, on the verge of bolting into his tunnel. 

Something is different. 

He sniffs, testing for the sour scent of charrids.  There is only the musty smell of moist earth, underlain by the metallic bite of wet stone giving off the day’s heat to the steady rain.  He listens with his eyes closed, trying to pick out a break in the overall hissing pattern that might be caused by water dripping off armor.  The night is quiet except for the steady background thrum of the rain and the counterpoint spatters from the nightly streamlet that gushes through a crack in the overhanging rock.  He eases forward on his hands and toes, every muscle tense, peering into the dark, still sniffing.  Although he can’t assign a reason to his suspicion, something doesn’t feel right. 

“Crichton.” 

After so many days of hearing no one’s voice but his own, the whispered greeting falls on his ears with all the force of a shout.  There is no thought, no time to reason out what the two syllables mean.  He whirls and dives for the black-on-black route to safety. 

“Wait, it’s me!  We came to get you.  Crichton!” 

The speaker manages to grab one boot before he disappears completely.  She hauls with her entire body, and manages to drag the lower half of his body out of the tunnel.  The part of his brain in charge of survival screams at him to kick at her in order to get loose.  The rest of him can’t bring himself to kick a woman.  Her hands shift to a better grip on his ankle, she heaves a second time, and she dumps him onto the mound of wet earth beneath the entrance to his refuge.  Propping himself up on an elbow, he looks up at the barely visible person standing over him.  Thin limbs and angularly cocked joints form a constantly shifting, lively geometric pattern against the night sky.

“Chi.”  The syllable feels strange in his mouth.  He repeats the motion several times, and then tries it again.  “Chiana.”

“Hey, old man.”  She crouches down next to him.  “We’ve been comming you for arns to let you know we were coming to pick you up.  Why the frell didn’t you answer?” 

“Comms,” he says slowly.  “Comms can be traced.”

“Pilot figured out a way to encrypt the frequency so they can’t pick it up.”  A hand plucks at his arm.  “Get up.  We’re in a hurry.” 

He stays where he is, lying in the dirt, and thinks about comms and frequencies and tracking systems, and Chiana’s presence in this particular spot.  “How did you find me?” he asks, feeling the first squirming sensation of alarm in the pit of his stomach.  If Chiana could find him, the charrids might not be far behind.  “How did you know to come to this spot?” 

She points toward her altered eyes with two fingers of one hand, indicating the elongated pupils.  “We had almost given up.  But I can see things now.  Remember?  I can see right through solid objects.  You know that.  We were about to leave when I saw you headed this way.”

“Yeah,” he says after a long pause.  He had forgotten about her eyes. 

Chiana’s white hair moves from one side to another in a ghostly fashion, not quite luminescent in the stray beams of light that make their way into his foyer.  She is peering at him, cocking her head to one side and then the other, the motions familiar despite the strange surroundings.  “You have to comm the others and tell them to get up here quick!  We have to hurry.  Where are the others?”  Chiana creeps closer.  “Where are your comms?  You’re not wearing them.”

His comms badge is at the bottom of the Bottomless Pit along with the dead.  It had been consigned to the one spot from which he could never retrieve it on the day he had found himself hunched over the small bit of metal and circuitry, pleading into a deactivated device for Moya or the Peacekeepers or for anyone at all to come get him.  He still doesn’t remembered pulling it off his belt.  It had been pure luck that he hadn’t activated it.  The charrids would have homed in on it and descended on him in full force if he had.  So he had thrown it down the hole, the only way he could think of to compensate for his weakness. 

“Gone.”  He isn’t sure which one of Chiana’s questions he’s answering.  It doesn’t matter.  The single word works for both. 

“Which?”

“All of them.”

Chiana nods twice, a pair of fast up and down movements against the stars.  She accepts the losses far more easily than he can.  “Then let’s go.  Hurry.” 
 
“No.  Leave me.”  His life is here now.  There is nothing for him back there except memories that are too agonizing to contemplate. 

“Are you totally fahrbot?” she screeches in a whisper.  “You can’t stay here.  Come on!  We have to leave.  Pilot gave us six arns to get in here, find you, and get out.  We’ve used up six and a half already.  We have to leave, Crichton!” 

“Six arns?” he asks.  Anything short of a rowboat should be able to make it from Moya to the surface and back in under two arns. 

“I’ll explain that later.”  She plucks at his sleeve, a small tug of encouragement.  “Come on.”

There is a confusing, disorienting moment after that, consisting of thoughts of what it would be like to return to Moya, to walk through her gently gleaming tiers, and to enter a particular cell and find no one there.  There would be possessions, weapons, distinctly feminine pieces of clothing; toys, blankets, and the dozens of items that said that an infant had once resided there along with its mother.  The hurt is every bit as intense as it had been on the day he had lost them; the passage of time and the scores of dead have done nothing to diminish the pain.  He shakes his head and begins easing toward his tunnel.  “Go away.”

Before he can reach safety, someone moves out of the darker shadows to one side.  He rolls over twice to get away from the new threat, coming to an abrupt stop only because his back slaps up against a rock with a hard smack.  The dark blob passes through a bit of pale, rain diffused starlight, revealing the outline of braids, tanktas, and the gleaming hilt of a weapon strapped to the person’s back. 

“D’Argo?  D … D’Argo?”  The ground seems to shift under him then, and the past days compress into a blur of hate and vengeance that lacks the pleasant taste of sanity.  If D’Argo isn’t dead, then maybe he was wrong about everything else.  He waits for the universe to undergo some sort of surreal contortions, after which everything will start to make sense.  Nothing happens except that he feels increasingly sick and confused.  “D’Argo?”

A familiar voice says, “Hardly.  My father was twice the warrior I ever will be, Crichton.”

“Jothee.  Why … what …?”  He stops to think about how Chiana got here, and comes up with a reason for Jothee’s presence.  “Cloaked ship.” 

“Don’t start thinking that I’m going to spend the rest of my life following you around and taking on every one of your hopeless causes the way my father did.  This is a one time favor in his honor, and only because Chiana asked me to help.” 

He starts a slow migration back toward his hole, pants scuffing quietly over the wet ground while he keeps one eye on Jothee.  Reason has returned.  There is no disorientation left.  His quest is once again securely fixed before him.  He will go on punishing the ones who took away the only things that mattered to him. 

“Get on your feet, Crichton.”  Jothee takes a step forward.  “We’re in a hurry!” 

It is doubtful that the young luxan can see him in the dark; he shakes his head anyway, if only to emphasize his resolve to himself.  “Sorry to ruin your big moment of self sacrifice, Junior, but take a hike.” 

Jothee takes another step forward.  “We don’t have time to argue.”

Smell isn’t affected by the dark.  The realization hits too late.  He spins onto his hands and feet, aims straight for the welcoming maw of the tunnel, drives forward like a lineman when the ball is snapped, and is a full microt too late.  In an eerily familiar replay of his very first arn aboard Moya, the familiar slapping sting nails him square in the back of the neck.  The moment he has been seeking for so many days finally comes.  Unconscious enfolds him, shutting out all the guilt and grief in a way that not even sleep can provide.  His only regret as he collapses face first into the dirt is that it will not last forever. 

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

[KernilCrash]

Part 3

He wakes quickly and without the usual avalanche of intense, pre-waking dreams.  It is a relief to make the transition without being forced to live through the horrors one more time.  He rolls over, feeling to the side with one hand to make sure he isn’t going to fall down a hole, and receives one hell of a surprise.  His fingers locate metal, not rock.  When he opens his eyes to check on his surroundings, the mental shock is displaced by physical agony.  A shaft of liquid fire drives into the center of his brain, incinerating the front of his skull on the way in.  Once inside his head, it no longer resembles pain.  It becomes a living entity inhabiting a space he can’t touch with his hands, filling the interior of his head from ear to ear with a blazing inferno that he is convinced is intended to drive him insane.  A noise comes out of him that is a confused merging of a sob and a scream.   

“What’s wrong?  What’s the matter?” someone asks.

Startled by the noise, he rolls away from it, only to slam into something hard, irregularly shaped, and unyielding.  The smaller discomfort of the impact makes him forget to keep his eyes closed.  The pain is worse than before.  He bites off a yowl half way through, rolls face down on the deck, and buries his head in his arm.  It’s too much.  Between the change in his surroundings, the pain, the blindness, the noise and confusion, he feels as though he has been dumped into someone else’s body without the benefit of an operator’s manual.  The end result is that he is on the verge of getting sick.  Except his stomach is empty and he suspects that vomiting is only going to make his head hurt worse, so he swallows hard against the unpleasant pressure, fighting his stomach back down where it belongs.

The voice speaks to him again.  It drains away a portion of the chaos, replacing it with a small measure of sanity.  “Crichton, what the frell are you doing?”

“Chiana,” he mumbles into the sleeve of his coat, remembering his visitors and the abrupt end to the conversation they had been holding in the rain. 

Things are looking up mentally.  Physically, nothing has improved.  He tries to crawl away from the pain.  Not being able to see where he’s going turns it into a blundering, confused journey.  The discomfort follows him wherever he goes, burrowing into his head until every movement becomes a pulsing torture.  Lying still is awful, moving is worse, trying to find out where he is and what’s going on is unbearable.  He hitches his way slowly to one side, one hand firmly clasped over his eyes while the other one strains to drag his body along, and again comes up against a barricade.  A floundering exploration with his hand tells him what his eyes cannot.  He is jammed in against a row of seats. 

Throughout it all, Chiana is grabbing at his shoulders, his arm, and his back in succession, trying to control his movements.  Her attempts at helping him only manages to make things more confusing.  The constantly shifting pressure of her hands, darting from one portion of his body to the next without warning, makes him feel as though he is being attacked by a flock of animated mittens.  It is both distracting and disorienting just at the moment when he needs clarity the most. 

“What’s the matter?  Where are you hurt?” she yells, beginning to sound as panicked as he feels. 

“My eyes,” he gasps, followed by another screech of pain.  “What the hell have you done to my eyes?” 

“Nothing!  We haven’t touched you except to drag your sorry, smelly butt onto the ship.  Stop rolling around like a half squashed banta bug and hold still so I can look at you!  Hold still!” 

Her fingers are cool and gentle against his cheeks.  They turn his face upward toward the source of her voice and brush lightly against his closed eyelids.  After several microts the touches disappear.  He hears her moving around until she is behind him, and wonders where she’s going.  Without warning, two hands clamp something soft over his eyes.  It startles him to the point that he jumps, momentarily dislodging both her hands and whatever she is holding, but the important thing is that most of the light is gone.  It is dark, as it should be.  The worst of the agony recedes. 

“How’s that?” she asks. 

“Better,” he rasps through a throat that has gone dry from the pain.  A trickle of ice cold sweat creeps down the back of his neck.  He is chilled, sweating, shaking, and exhausted all at once.  “That’s better.” 

“I was trapped in the dark once, for five solar days.  I remember what it was like when they let us out, and that was only for a short time.  Hold this.  Sit up and hold this.”  She rescues whatever it is that he has just dropped, replaces it over his eyes, and then tugs him upright.  “Were you in the dark the whole time?”   

“Uh huh.”  He sneaks a peek past the padding, wanting nothing more than to see a friendly face for the first time in how long he can’t remember, and has to bite down on his lip to prevent himself from crying out.  Logic says that Chiana is right, and this is nothing more than the outcome of spending all that time in the dark.  Logic doesn’t help when it feels like someone is driving a ten-dench needle straight through each of his eyes.  He starts to roll away from her, intending to bury his head in his arm again, seeking out the position that is dark and peaceful. 

Before he can get very far, she yanks him back.  “Serves you right for trying to open them.  Cut it out and hold this until I can get it to stay in place.”  Her touch is more compassionate than her tone.  She guides his hands one at a time to the rectangular wad of material and presses against them until he gets the idea.  “I’ll be right back.  Got it?” 

He nods and concentrates on remembering to press something against his eyes.  But something odd starts to happen while he’s waiting for Chiana to return.  Whatever it is, it makes it hard to pay attention to what his hands are doing, or whether he’s even upright.  It begins when he notices how the soft cloth she has placed in his hands smells like Moya’s amnexus fluid, builds momentum when he starts to think what it will be like to walk the leviathan’s hushed corridors again, and gathers more power and velocity when he considers that he will soon be able to eat whenever he wants, sleep on a soft bed, and will not have to spend every waking microt wondering how much longer he can survive. 

He operates his body remotely, sitting safe and warm in a control room several motras distant from where John Crichton’s dirt caked body slops about when Chiana tries to get him to sit up straight.  The mechanisms required in order to make the arms and legs function feel unfamiliar.  He dredges up a moment from his childhood:  trying to draw a diagonal line with an Etch-A-Sketch.  He remembers how both hands had to work in perfect concert, moving at exactly the same pace, and how if his attention wavered for even an instant, the line would take off in unwanted directions.  Controlling his mind and body is like that.  He tries to focus his thoughts, concentrating on where he is and why it is taking so long for them to reach Moya, and starts to keel over to one side.  When he pours all his efforts into staying upright, as Chiana has repeatedly asked him, his thoughts begin to run together like chalk paintings dissolving in the rain.  The blues, greens, and purples of his life swirl and mix, interspersed with the yellows and reds of death and loss, until he can’t remember what is real and what is wishful thinking. 

Chiana’s voice fades into the distance.  He knows she is talking to Jothee; he can still make out her voice.  It is the words themselves that are losing their substance, sliding together until he can’t make heads or tails of the syllables.  Then gravity takes a vacation.  Up and down lose all meaning, along with most of the other directions that he normally uses to make sense of his universe.  After that, it doesn’t take long for the rest of his surroundings to slide very far away. 

“Crichton, sit up,” Chiana says.  It jolts him back to a state that resembles awareness. 

“Chi,” is all he can think of to say to her. 

“You’re a mess,” she says, but it isn’t lacking in kindness. 

He spends a few microts thinking that maybe the small insults are her way of saying he could use some help from a friend.  “Pip.” 

“Yeah, your favorite traveling companion and all that dren.  I know.  Next time you want me to travel with you, I want you to promise you’ll bathe more often.”  She pulls one of his hands away from the padding covering his eyes and slaps it against the side of his head instead.  “Hold that there for a microt while I get this in place.”

He remains marginally awake and aware, a human packed carefully into a vacuum bottle where nothing can disturb his drifting mental state.  He is able to register that Chiana is spending dozens of microts fussing with lengths of cloth in order to get the padding tied in place over his eyes, and can’t figure out how to say anything about it or express his appreciation.  When they bring him some food and water, and demand that he eats, he knows that he chews and swallows the way someone watches a movie and knows that the people on the screen are eating.  When the food comes right back up again, there is nothing he can do to warn Chiana, or to stop it, or even to keep it from getting on himself.  He floats -- muzzy-headed, warm, and comfortable -- content to let Chiana and Jothee take care of everything.  They drag him away from the mess he has made, dump him onto a pallet of foam padding, and leave him to dream.

He knows that they are taking him back to Moya.  There they will teach him how to resume a former existence.  With some coaching he will learn to get up in the morning, to shave and to dress, and to once again walk through the corridors in a mockery of the life he once led.  Chiana and the others will be cloyingly solicitous.  They will hover over him until he remembers how to eat and to smile and be cheery; they will watch carefully to make sure he learns how to live again. 

But no amount of time can restore the person who operated the slides and levers of his soul.  That part of his life is gone forever.  The gleaming hallways will forever ring with the silences of what is missing.  And some day, when the others are no longer paying attention, having long since assumed that he is fully recovered, he will find a way to get himself killed.  He would never do it intentionally.  But he knows that eventually, without actually meaning to, he’ll make the most god-awful rotten decision, and he will be able to join Aeryn at last. 

His friends will grieve over his cold body, and remark on the unfortunate set of circumstances that led to the horrible event.  No one will blame him.  It was a bad plan, they will say.  It was doomed to fail.  Whoever is left aboard Moya will pronounce it lousy luck, an unexpected turn of events, “It was fate,” they will say.  He will be the only person who knows, acknowledging it in that last flashing instant between life and death, that it was a trick of his subconscious, fulfilling his unspoken desire to be with his family. 

Turning away from that morbid prediction of a prematurely truncated future, he sinks into a half-waking state that he decides is similar to how it feels to be in a womb; he is safe, there are people looking after him, and there is nothing to do except lie still and let his tears soak into the fabric covering his eyes.  Chiana comes to check on him from time to time, often adjusting the covers they have placed over him or fussing with the makeshift bandages protecting his eyes, always murmuring small comforting phrases.  He appreciates her kindness, and does his best not to wish that she would leave him alone.   

He surfaces from the latest in a series of short naps.  Individual words begin to emerge from the hushed background murmur that is always there whenever he wakes.  Terms such as bombardment, starburst, orbit, entry vector, and velocity swarm around him, accompanied by chatter about someone who can’t see, stealth trajectories, and the need to avoid a particular segment of space because something threatening is approaching from that direction.  A higher pitched voice keeps insisting that there is something wrong with someone’s tongue. 

“Pip?” he asks after a while. 

A fast rustle approaches from a direction he would have considered ‘up’, except that he is lying down.  She might be coming from the front of the ship.  “Yeah, Crichton?”

“Is there a war goin’ on?”  Some of what they were talking about in the background fits together to suggest that a planet is going to be unlivable in the near future.  He is concerned about wormholes and destroyed solar systems.

“Not yet and not for long, old man.  That’s why we have to hurry.” 

He wonders if it is the answer that doesn’t make any sense, or if there is something wrong with the inside of his head.  “Is there a problem?” he asks, hoping to get a better answer than the last one.

“No, not much of one anyway.  We’re going to have you back on Moya in another arn, Crichton.  Why don’t you take it easy?  Get some sleep.”

Although her reply is kind and compassionate for a change, it isn’t really any more of an answer than the one before it.  Chiana smart-mouthing at him is more informative than the pleasantries.  He decides to try one more time.  After that, chances are that he is going to pass out anyway.  Despite having just woken, he feels like he has just run the IASA obstacle course … a hundred times.  He asks, “What’s everyone worried about?” 

There are several small thumps next to him that he thinks might be the sort of sound that a slender, female body might make if it were to suddenly flop down on the deck plates near his head.  Her first comment isn’t any more enlightening than all the rest.  “You stink, Crichton, you know that?” 

“I know,” he mumbles.  “You already told me.”

“It’s bad enough that I figure I’ve earned the right to tell you more than once.”  She sneezes several times, and then finally provides an explanation.  “There’s a sort of a fleet coming in to pound the dren out of the charrids.  Pilot and Moya want to get the frell out of here before it starts, just in case all hezmana breaks loose.  They say they’re tired of getting shot at.  Can’t really blame them.”  She lets out a fast, high-pitched Chiana-laugh, and he nearly dissolves into tears at the sound simply because it’s so ordinary and familiar. 

Chiana rattles on, providing a few explanations, unaware of the effect her voice is having on him.  She dodges from one fact to the next in a confusing, verbal version of pinball:  she bounces off Moya’s current location at the edge of the solar system where the charrid scans won’t find her, ricochets past the fact that the charrid invasion force is intended for Hyneria, and then charts out a pinging, chiming, musically erratic path through why it is taking so long to return to Moya and how worried everyone has been about him.

“Wait.  Slow down,” he says finally.  He feels as though his head is the pinball, and he has smacked into one bumper too many.  “We don’t have hetch drive while the ship is cloaked?” he asks. 

“Hetch three is the best we can do until we’re clear of the charrid patrols, or else they’ll be able to pick up our motion,” she says.  “Because of some sort of spatial disturbance thing, Jothee says.”

“Six arns,” he says, remembering Chiana’s lousy math on the planet.  “That’s why Pilot had to give you so much time to come pick me up.” 

“Except we had trouble finding you, so we’re running late.  We’re going as fast as we can without risking them spotting either us or figuring out that Moya is hiding nearby.” 

The conversation is forcing him to relearn how to think.  For too many days his brain has been allowed to run in neutral, finding its own course through the miserable but familiar existence of sleep, eat, drink, and hunt charrids.  Putting Chiana’s explanations into a form he can understand is creating an almost physical level of discomfort.  He rubs the side of his head with one hand, and sorts out the pieces that don’t make any sense.  Most of the confusion has to do with the planet and the charrid invasion of the Hynerian Empire.

“What about the eidelons?” he asks eventually.

“There aren’t enough to go around.  Not yet anyway.  They couldn’t spare anyone aside from Yn’dlath to help solve this mess, and one eidelon isn’t enough to fix it, so the scarrans and the Peacekeepers have teamed up to take care of it the old-fashioned way.  They’re going to pound the dren out of the charrids.  Once the orbital bombardment is over, there won’t be enough body parts left to put a single one of those weasel-toothed, wedge-headed feck faces back together again.”

“Peacekeepers and scarrans?  Working together?” he asks.

“Neither side gains anything if the charrids attack Hyneria, so they’re happy to grind them back down to being nice little obedient servicers.  And … well, after the war neither side has enough ships close enough to this system to take care of this on their own.  They’ll work together just long enough to keep the charrids from getting their hands on the Hynerian fleet.”

“Power plays,” he says. 

“That’s right.  You’re not entirely brain zapped, are you?”

“Wouldn’t count on it.” 

Despite Chiana’s encouraging assessment, he’s feeling pretty comprehensively stupid.  The only reason he is able to figure it out is because it is a classic maneuver.  He assumes that the charrids see the armistice as an opportunity to move up a rung or two in the galactic pecking order, which would explain why they had been so intent on making sure that the secret of their invasion force never made it off the planet.  At last he understands why the charrids had put so much effort into trying to dig one measly human out of the ruins, and why they had been so intent on killing the entire landing party, women and children included.  The charrids had known that if the two big boys on the block caught wind of their plan to get control of the Hynerian navy, their bid for power would be squashed quickly and without mercy … just as it will be.  Neither the scarrans nor the Peacekeepers are going to take a chance on moving to third string while the charrids take over second, so they have joined together to slap down the upstart. 

There’s a piece missing, however.  It takes a bit of thought to figure it out.  “Where’s Rygel?”

“On board Moya,” Chiana says.  “He refused to leave until we found out if you were alive.” 

He weaves that element into the larger picture and gets a different result.  “Hail the returning monarch.” 

“Not brain zapped at all.  I had to threaten to damage Rygel’s mivonks before he would explain it to me.” 

The charrids are waiting for the triumphant return of the rightful occupant of the Hynerian throne before launching their attack.  Their best chance for a fast, easy victory will be at the moment when the Royal Hynerian Navy assembles in one spot to honor the Dominar’s return and the entire empire turns its collective attention on the celebration.  The charrids didn’t want to attack until Rygel returned, and Rygel refused to return until he determined the fate of a single human trapped on the planet where the invasion force was assembled.  It had turned into an inadvertent stalemate. 

The facts continue to mutate, casting another conclusion in a new light.  Rygel isn’t being quite as selfless as it had appeared at first glance.  By being patient, and waiting the extra days before resuming his throne, the wily ruler of over six hundred billion subjects is getting the Scarran Empire and the Peacekeepers to do his fighting for him.  The combined force will smash the charrid invasion force, break its fleet, and Rygel gets to proclaim a victory without putting so much as a single Hynerian ship at risk. 

“Smart little bastard,” he says on a yawn, and starts to drift off.  “Nap.  I’m pooped.”

“I keep telling Jothee he got the tonguing wrong.  It’s supposed to be automatic, but it may have been too much for you because you’re so weak.  D’Argo … D’Argo would have gotten it right, Crichton.  D’Argo would have known that he needed to be careful.” 

He knows he should say something to Chiana about the quiet little hiccup in her voice after she said D’Argo’s name the first time.  He should tell her that he finally understands the totality of loss and the depth of the heartache that comes from a loved one’s death, and that he knows about having the most important part of your life ripped away from you just as things are getting good for a change.  There are dozens of small revelations he could share with her in an effort to ease her grief, most of them having to do with how the smallest things can summon smiles and tears simultaneously.  But it is dark inside whatever she has used to cover his eyes, and Jothee’s ship is dry and warm, and mostly quiet -- all of which is the same as his sleeping place after it warms up in the late afternoon.   And the way he keeps falling asleep despite all efforts to stay awake seems to support Chiana’s theory that he hasn’t recovered from the tonguing.   

He squirms into a more comfortable position lying on the deck plates, rests his head on his arm, and lets the exhaustion carry him to a drifting, almost dreaming state where he is aware of very little other than the quiet whine the control skeleture makes whenever Jothee moves, the roar of the engines, and the distant, unintelligible chatter of Chiana’s and Jothee’s voices.

Then, abruptly, just as he is beginning to think he really has been rescued, he is back on the sun-scorched plain, and he isn’t sure any more.  Powdery dirt puffs out from under his boots with every step; miniature dust clouds rise up to coat his clothes and skin with flour-fine grit.  The sun hammers against his head and shoulders, doing its best to turn him into the same inconsequential sand as everything else on this planet. 

He looks down.  The bones are there, half buried in the sand.  Once again, he tries to lift them, this time knowing that it will be his last opportunity to bring them back to Moya.  They crumble in his hands.  The bones turn to nothingness, spilling from his fingers faster than he can try to catch them.  He lunges forward, desperate, trying to save the skulls, and they melt into the sand.  The wind howls across the plain, turning the entire landscape to swirling dust devils, and they are gone forever.  For the first time since he began visiting this place, he considers lying down in the dirt and allowing himself to blow away as well.  At least that way they would all be together for eternity, his dust mixing together with theirs until they are indistinguishable.   

He is making the first move to lie down when a pair of boots scrunches toward him across parched gravel and sand.  The sound stops him.  He gets to his feet slowly and turns to face her.  Aeryn is just as beautiful as the first day he met her, just as beautiful as every other time he has faced her in his dreams.  As always, she is dressed in a black t-shirt and her hair hangs free, drifting across her shoulders when she leans to one side in order to shift Little D to a more comfortable position in the crook of her arm. 

Aeryn tilts her head to one side in the familiar movement, smiles at him, and speaks.  She has learned a new piece of dialogue. 

“I’m no more than fifteen microts behind you.  There won’t be enough time for Pilot to redeploy the docking web after you land.  I’ll bring the Marauder in manually.” 

He wakes with a start, his heart pounding as wildly as if he had just experienced a particularly violent nightmare.  The voice had seemed to come from somewhere outside of his dream.  He is struggling to get to his knees and is yelling her name before he can stop to think about the futility of calling out to someone who is dead. 

“Aeryn?  AERYN!!” 

His cry goes unanswered. 

He lowers himself to the deck, and spends several useless microts wishing he was back on the planet waiting for the destruction to begin.  Dust to dust.  He would be with her until the end of time, their molecules mixed together in the midst of the searing destruction that will soon rain down from orbit.

The rustle that is Chiana returns to sit beside him.  A sympathetic hand rubs the back of his shoulder for several microts.  “She had already closed her comms by the time you yelled, but you won’t have to wait much longer to see her.  She’ll be on board Moya two microts after we land.”

Halfway through Chiana’s explanation, a whirlwind swoops into his brain and sucks him up.  It is a confusing cacophony made up of darkness and cold, of physical hunger and the spiritual emptiness of hate that eases only when he feeds on the deaths of others, and of the bleakness that comes from wishing for his own death.  With just a few words from Chiana, he is ripped loose from the single fact that has guided every one of his days on the planet, and is thrown into a mental maelstrom that he is powerless to control.  The sounds of a thousand unpleasant memories combine into a chaotic howling that threatens to burst his skull.  He flounders, distantly aware that he has managed to make it to his hands and knees, and that he is shaking and sick from the onset of shock. 

Chiana goes on yelling into his ear, doing her best to tell him something important.  He can’t make out the words over the roaring inside his head.  Listening doesn’t work.  He tries speaking instead.  He tries to tell her that someone has made a mistake of galactic proportions.  “Aeryn and the baby died.  My plan killed them.  They’re dead because of me.”

“No, they aren’t,” she says, still shouting so he can hear her over the chaos in his head.  “They’re both alive.  Frell, Crichton!  Why didn’t you tell us sooner that you thought they were dead?  We could have let you talk to Aeryn by now!” 

He remains on his hands and knees, head hanging down between his arms, and tries to convince himself that it’s true.  It’s easy to accept that he’s going home to Moya, that Rygel, Chiana, and everyone else is alive and well, and that in a matter of a few hundred microts he will once again be standing in the same bronze-walled maintenance bay where his out-of-control, frequently unbelievable life in the Uncharted Territories first began.  The only part he can’t accept is that his wife and son will be there to greet him.  When he envisions stepping down out of Jothee’s ship, the space they should occupy in the maintenance bay remains empty.  It’s easier to believe that he’ll find his father standing there talking about a trout than it is to recreate Aeryn’s quiet smile and the gray-blue eyes that always hold just a little something extra whenever she looks at him. 

“No!” he cries, convinced that Chiana is just trying to ease the shock.  “I killed them.” 

“Fahrbot,” she whispers close to his head.  One microt later Chiana’s fingers begin unfastening the cloth that is protecting his eyes.  She pauses long enough to give his shoulder a tiny shove, very nearly knocking him over in the process.  “If she’s dead, then there’s a ghost living on Moya because a few arns ago she threatened to shoot the soft parts of my backside if I didn’t come back with you in one piece, Crichton.” 

Increasing amounts of light begin filtering through the wrappings.  He lets out a gasp and pulls away from her light touch.  “What the hell are you doing, Chiana?”

“I know you, Crichton.  You’re not going to believe anything we tell you until the proof is standing right in front of you and you can see it with your own two eyes.  If you start getting used to the light now, you may be able to see by the time we land.” 

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

[KernilCrash]

Part 4

The Marauder settled onto the hangar bay’s deck plates with a multi-tonal clank and the familiar creaking that was the shock absorbing pistons of the landing struts compressing under the weight of the hull armor.  Aeryn didn’t bother with the usual shutdown procedures.  A fast slap against the emergency breaker cut the primary energy circuit, and she was halfway to the belly hatch before the whine of the power cells could begin to fade.

“Pilot, get us out of here as fast as Moya can manage,” she called over her comms, and triggered the hatch release with another unforgiving slam of her fist.  The stress of the past several days, kept well contained until the instant that John’s rescue was complete, was demanding to be let out.  The Marauder’s heavily reinforced components positively begged for abuse. 

“Come on, you frelling thing!” she yelled at the slow-moving hatch.  “Open!”  A resounding kick did nothing to hasten the process.  It did, however, relieve some of her tension.  She considered shooting the mechanism.  That might feel even better than kicking the door. 

“We are already underway, Aeryn.”  Aside from an overly calm tone of voice, Pilot’s reply contained nothing to suggest he had overheard her frustrated outburst. 

Aeryn took a firm grip on her temper.  This was not the appropriate moment to bark at either Pilot or Moya.  The leviathan had driven herself to the point of total exhaustion in order to reach the planet before the incoming combined Scarran-Peacekeeper fleet.  High Command and the Scarran delegate cared little for the handful of Peacekeepers and a single human they had been told were hiding in the ruins.  The commanders of the small task force would not have delayed the bombardment for a single microt if they had gotten here first.  Pilot and Moya had spared nothing in their efforts to reach the planet in time for a fast, stealthy rescue mission.   

“Ninety arns until Moya is rested enough to starburst?” Aeryn asked. 

“Possibly more,” Pilot answered.  “I have shut down all non-essential systems in an effort to hasten the process.  We are doing our best, but she is very tired.” 

Aeryn paused inside the Marauder just long enough to finish the conversation.  “No rush, Pilot.  All she needs to do is get clear of the system before they start the attack.  After that she can rest as long as she needs.  Thank Moya for me.  We never would have gotten here in time without her effort.”

Without bothering to wait for an answer, she lowered herself gingerly through the belly hatch, hung for the extra microt necessary in order to give recently healed muscles time to adjust to the extension, and then dropped the remaining distance to the hangar floor.  It took her an extra two microts to straighten up, and by that time Chiana and Jothee were already leading John down the steps of Jothee’s ship. 

Aeryn’s eager stride faltered. 

They had tried to warn her.  Between more critical communications, Jothee had included the message that John’s time on the planet hadn’t been an easy one, and Chiana had gone out of her way to mention that he was nearly blind.  That was all they had been able to tell her before Moya’s sensors had detected the lead Command Carrier maneuvering to enter the solar system and they had scrambled to get out of the way of the incoming force.  The arrival of the hastily assembled fleet left her with little to do but pilot the Marauder and worry about how badly John had been injured.  She had put the time to use by trying to prepare herself mentally and emotionally for the sight of festering wounds, hideous scars, or even a missing limb.

John stumbled off the last step and nearly collapsed.  Chiana and Jothee caught him, and helped him regain his feet.  Throughout it all, John’s left hand remained firmly clasped over his eyes.   

Chiana glanced toward Aeryn and explained, “He was underground most of the time.  He can’t stand the light.” 

“Pilot?” Aeryn called.  She had meant to ask Pilot to reduce the light levels to a quarter their normal setting.  Before she could finish the request, John began staggering as badly as a patient in the last stages of Gillurian brain rot, and he pulled away from his two guides.  His knees buckled, and this time he wound up sprawled face-first on the floor.  He lay still for no more than half a microt, then fought his way up onto his knees and stayed there, hunched over and squinting through his fingers, searching for something. 

“Aeryn?” he called in a hoarse whisper. 

The shock and hesitation evaporated.  She was beside him in a split-microt, ignoring the dirt, the smell, the beard, and the filthy, matted hair.  There were no obvious gaping wounds, no visible sign of infection, no missing parts.  He had two arms, two legs, two undamaged blue eyes blinking and watering in the mild light of the maintenance bay, ten fingers, and although he was swaying as badly as if Moya’s gravity bladders had torn loose from their moorings, John was intact.

She searched for the right way to greet him.  “Hey.” 

“Aeryn?” he asked, ignoring the second half of the ritual greeting.  Both of his hands were reaching out, searching for her.  “Aeryn?” 

“Right here.”  She grabbed one of the flailing hands and guided it to her cheek.  “I’m right here.” 

He let out an agonized sounding shriek, one that sounded like it was being produced by the last bit of air being expelled from his lungs, and pulled her into a two-armed grasp.  Desperation clutched at her with grimy fingers.  She leaned into the embrace willingly, happy to be in John Crichton’s arms no matter how dirt encrusted and stinking they might be. 

“Pilot?” she called again.  This time she finished the request to lower the light levels.  Most of the maintenance bay disappeared into barely lit gloom.  “Is that better?” she asked John. 

“You were dead,” he mumbled into her shoulder.  “You were dead.  I was sure you were dead.  You and Little D died.”  He began to shake.  She held him more tightly, trying to stop the shudders.   

“No.  I was only wounded.”  She glared at Chiana and Jothee.  “Why didn’t you tell him?”

“We did.  He didn’t believe us,” they answered together.  Their voices overlapped, providing both halves of the message at the same time. 

“I killed you.  My plan got you killed,” John gasped.  He had his eyes open now.  It looked as though they hurt in spite of the dimmed light, but he definitely could see.  He was looking at her the way a person looks at an imaginary wraith:  as though she would disappear if he blinked.

Aeryn wiped a muddy-looking streak of moisture from his cheek.  “Your plan worked.  I got hit, but we made it out just as you said.”  She looked up at Chiana and Jothee again.  “What happened?  What went wrong?  Why didn’t he know?” 

Chiana shrugged and knelt down beside where Crichton was now sprawled half in and half out of Aeryn’s lap.  “We didn’t have time to find out.  All he told us is that Arlan and the others are dead.”

Aeryn gave him a small shake, as though the jostling could straighten out the details.  “John, we were picked up.”

“The wreckage is still there.  The transport pod was blown to bits,” he continued to argue.

“Jothee’s men picked us up in a shielded ship.  They told your group that.  The message was acknowledged.  They landed where the ship would block the firing coming from the charrids, and pulled all of us inside.  All of us.  Everyone made it.  They took off just as the transport pod was hit.  Your group received the transmission!” 

“The comms sergeant died a few arns after we reached the tunnels.  I never saw him again after … after I saw you … get killed,” John whispered. 

The idea that John had spent his days thinking she was dead and that he was stranded on the planet, possibly without any chance of being rescued, was creating a strange form of frantic desperation.  Just as John kept insisting she was dead despite the living, breathing evidence to the contrary, she was consumed with the need to convince him that he should have known she had survived.  “Arlan was wearing a command link.  Arlan had to know.  Jothee’s men made sure that you knew we got out safely, so you would know to hang on until we could return with a stronger force to rescue you.” 

John’s next few sentences banished the last of her disbelief.  “Arlan was the one who told me that the transport pod had been hit.  And the comms were being scrambled.  We didn’t receive any transmissions.  They came in after us, Aeryn.  Everyone else died by the end of the first day.  Arlan hung on for two days, and then he died too.”  He clung to her more fiercely.  “Everyone died.  I thought you had died.  I knew that Pilot and Moya wouldn’t stay if they thought everyone was dead, and I was certain that everyone else died.”   

She did her best to match the strength of his embrace, holding him as tightly as he was holding on to her.  “Listen to me, John.  When I got hit, the others formed a perimeter around me and held the charrids off until the luxans could get there and pull us out.  They were already on their way, so it only took a few microts.  They landed between us and the charrid lines, took us on board, and then came back here instead of rescuing you because I was so badly injured.  Do you understand?  They put my injuries ahead of returning to pick you up because everyone trusted that you would find a way to survive.” 

“Why didn’t you come today?” he asked suddenly.  “Why didn’t you come to get me?”

“I haven’t healed enough to move fast.  I can’t fight.  I would have been a liability.  If it weren’t for that, they never would have been able to talk me into flying a defensive patrol for Moya instead of coming with Jothee.  Never.  If it weren’t for that, I would have been there.”

He nodded twice, accepting the explanation without a complaint, and then changed the subject again.  “D’Argo.  Where’s the squirt?  Where’s the little D?  Is he all right?  He was underneath you.”  He began to push himself out of her embrace, looking distraught.  The result of his efforts was a short-lived attempt to get to his feet that ended with John toppling to one side. 

“The last time I checked, he was with Rygel and Pilot in the Den.  He’s fine.  When I fell, I went down at an angle.”  She slid forward and pulled his head and shoulders into her lap again, using the embrace to still his attempts to get up.  “It’s the last thing I remember:  thinking that I had to turn so I didn’t land on top of him.  He’s happy, healthy, and he’s grown so much you won’t believe it.” 

John had gone back to clinging to her as though she would simply wink out of existence if he let go.  Aeryn rubbed the back of his head, ignoring the unpleasant slide of greasy hair beneath her hand, and hung on to him tightly with her other arm.  Her grasp around his chest and shoulders revealed a problem that was far more serious than the layers of dirt and the mud-caked clothing.  The body that rested inside her one-armed grasp and that lay across her legs didn’t feel the way it was supposed to.  He wasn’t heavy enough.  Grimacing with anticipated distaste, she slid a hand inside his jacket and quested along his stomach, back, and ribs, searching for the flesh and muscle that should be there.  John didn’t respond to the fast, cursory examination.  His head remained buried against her stomach, probably as much to shield his eyes as to seek out tactile evidence of her presence.  Her investigation located more layers of leather beneath the outer jacket, creating the illusion of a healthy physique, and not nearly enough body mass. 

Aeryn looked up at her two companions who were hovering anxiously over them.  “What did he have to eat down there?”

“Frell all for all we know,” Chiana said.  “We never got inside the ruins, so we don’t know for sure.  Why?”

“He’s nothing but bone.  There’s nothing left of him,” Aeryn said. 

“We tried to give him something to eat --” Chiana began.

“-- the inside of my ship reeks now,” Jothee finished.  “No one warned me that Crichton’s species could do anything that repulsive.” 

“He puked it back up,” Chiana said, clarifying what happened.  “I was impressed.  I’ve never seen anyone puke that far.” 

Aeryn went on hugging John, using her free hand to search for other signs of injury.  His frantic, distressed movements had come to a stop.  If it hadn’t been for the strength of his grip around the middle of her body and the deep, irregular breaths coming from him, she might have assumed he had fallen asleep.  Instead, what was occurring in John’s body seemed more like letdown from an unsustainable level of tension or emotional upset.  He was relaxing more with each breath, at the same time showing some signs that he was reassembling some self-control.  She looked down at the head buried in her lap, fingered a few strands of grime-stiffened hair away from what she could see of John’s face, and then turned her attention back to the question of the overly thin body. 

“They had combat rations with them,” she said.  “If the others are dead, he should have had enough to make it through in better shape than this.”

Jothee sank down on one knee, one hand clamped over his nose.  “Were the rations distributed equally?” 

“No,” Aeryn said, feeling the first tinge of despair.  “There was no time to share it out.  Two of Arlan’s men had the entire food supply.” 

Jothee shook his head, and stood up.   

The rest of the answer was obvious from condition of the body half-lying on the floor and still holding on to her like she was the only thing keeping him from floating off into space.  John was several stages beyond thin.  He was within a few days, possibly within a matter of arns of starving to death.  It resolved the question of what to do next.  “When sebaceans have been starved, they need a special diet at first.  John should be able to tolerate the same foods and supplements that we can.  Moya’s medical datastores will have the information we need.” 

“Then we get him some food first,” Chiana asked, “no matter how bad he smells?” 

“Food has to come first.  He’s too thin.”  She spoke to the skeleton clothed in tattered leather and rags.  “Come on, John.  On your feet.”

He lifted his head, peered around the maintenance bay for several microts with a dull-eyed expression that Aeryn thought might be the result of the type of exhaustion that follows a heavy shock, and then he obediently levered himself up onto his knees.  “What?” he asked once they had him standing upright. 

“Food,” she explained succinctly.  “What did you have to eat down there?” 

His eyes flickered toward her and then away.  “A few things.  Fast food, chinese takeout.”   

His gaze came to rest on the doorway leading out of the maintenance bay.  The beginnings of a frown replaced the deliberately vague look that had accompanied his uninformative answer.  Aeryn turned to see what was causing the shift.  A small crowd had formed near the door.  Most of the remaining Peacekeepers from Arlan’s unit had gathered there, accompanied by several of the luxans and Yn’dlath.  Every set of eyes was fixed on Crichton, some with avid, fascinated interest, the remainder merely showing curiosity or concern.  John responded by dropping his head until his chin was resting on his chest and letting out a slow, nearly inaudible sigh.  The signals were unmistakable.  Whether it was because he was hungry or tired or just worn out, he wasn’t prepared to deal with a mob of people, not even if they were there to offer some form of kindness.

Catching Chiana’s eye, Aeryn nodded her head toward the spectators.   “Ask them to leave,” she said.

“They’re just worried about Crichton,” the nebari said.  “They want to know if he’s all right.”

“I understand that.  Ask them to give him some time to adjust.” 

“I’ll do it,” Jothee said, volunteering.  Microts later he was talking to the assembled group by the doorway, shaking his head and gesturing toward the corridor.

“I’m okay,” John said.  “They don’t have to leave.” 

His body language and his reticence were saying something entirely different, however.  Every time John had been reunited with either Moya or his friends in the past, he had been joyfully exuberant no matter what the circumstances.  Even when he had returned to Moya to the unpleasant discovery that Scorpius was on board, he had still been emitting energetic spikes of confidence amidst his understandable caution.  This homecoming was turning into an exception to the rule, and the relief on his face when the crowd wandered away only strengthened the impression that something life-altering had happened to him while he was stranded on the planet. 

“Ready?” she asked. 

John nodded and headed toward the door, moving with some enthusiasm even if his course was slightly erratic due to the fact that he still had one hand shielding his eyes.  “I’ll have an extra large pizza with the works, don’t hold the fish, and a pitcher of beer.”

She did her best to play along with the absurd request.  “You can have that tomorrow for First Meal.”

“What do I get today?”

She turned the question back on him, trying to determine whether he really felt hungry or if it was an act.  “What do you feel like eating?”

John considered it for the length of time it took them to travel from the maintenance bay to the primary corridor leading forward along Moya’s central axis.  By the time he answered, he was looking moderately nauseous.  “Nothing we’ve got on board,” he admitted.  “Cornflakes maybe, or some of my Mom’s pancakes.  Anything else is gonna wind up in the same place as whatever Chiana and Jothee gave me.”

He stumbled, staggered to one side, and almost fell.  Aeryn snared his arm and pulled him back on course.  Once they were moving again, she said, “We know how to fix that.  It may take a few days though.” 

There was no witty reply to her comment.  This time his response was a tired-looking nod that looked more like a spiritless surrender than an agreeable acquiescence.  They fell silent after that, simply walking together several motras behind Chiana and Jothee, with Aeryn providing the occasional steadying hand to compensate for John’s increasingly rare losses of balance.  He gradually straightened up and began taking longer strides, forcing Aeryn to wonder whether he had been forced to scramble about hunched over the entire time.  There would be plenty of time to find out in the days to come, Aeryn decided.  With a few exceptions, all having to do with his physical condition, the questions could wait until he had been given some time to settle into his normal, often chaotic existence aboard Moya. 

Halfway to the Center Chamber, just as Aeryn was starting to relax, something new began happening to John.  At first she feared it was some sort of starvation-generated seizure.  As it progressed, however, it began to resemble something she had heard about during her cycles as a Peacekeeper.  First, he came to a shambling, erratic stop and let his hand drop away from his eyes.  Squinting, he looked from one end of the corridor to the other, and then staggered to one side and ran his hand down one of Moya’s bronze-plated ribs.  He patted the metalloid surface several times, and then rested his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes, as though in silent communion with the leviathan.  After several microts of standing like that, he turned his back to Moya’s bulkhead, slid down until he was sitting with his knees tucked up against his chest, and began to shake. 

“I feel sick,” he said.  “I feel awful.”  He wrapped his arms around his midsection, dropped his forehead onto his knees, and continued to tremble. 

“What the frell?” Chiana asked in a half-whisper.  “What’s wrong with him now?”

“Battle shock,” Jothee answered before Aeryn could say anything. 

“He hasn’t been in a battle!” Chiana said.

“It’s just a term for the syndrome,” Jothee snapped back at her.  “It’s an acclimation disorder.”

Aeryn was standing over John, one hand on his shoulder to let him know she was beside him, concentrating on his symptoms while devoting a small fraction of her attention to the escalating argument going on behind her. 

“What’s battle shock?” John asked without raising his head. 

“Do you feel like being back on Moya is a dream?” Aeryn asked.

John nodded jerkily.  “Everything seems … wrong.  It’s … I feel … upset … or like I’m about to have a coronary.”  He rubbed his chest with a fist for emphasis.  “I feel like I’m having an anxiety attack built for a budong.”

“You weren’t given enough time to adjust.  It sometimes happens when troops are pulled off the front line and returned to barracks without an adjustment period.” 

She had never actually seen the phenomenon because the Peacekeepers had been careful never to rotate ground combat units back to the Command Carrier too fast.  Troops who had been in combat for more than thirty planetary days were always moved to interim quarters where they could unwind and work off some of the residual adrenalin in the company of their fellow soldiers.  Clean uniforms free of the smell of war were issued.  They had an opportunity to bathe, eat, and sleep, usually within earshot of the battle, all of which eased their transition.  Only then, when the first critical adjustments were completed, were they transported back to the relative peace and quiet of their ships.  John had not been afforded even a single portion of that process.  His transition had taken place in a matter of arns.  After allowing for the amount of time he had spent asleep or unconscious aboard Jothee’s ship, by his perspective the transition had taken under an arn.  It wasn’t surprising that he was having difficulties coping with his surroundings, no matter how familiar they might be.

“I’m home.  I’m safe.  You and the pollywog are alive.  I’m being a big sissy,” he whispered. 

“Three arns ago you were living in a place where you had to devote every waking microt to the struggle to stay alive, without any expectation that we would be coming back to get you.”  Aeryn tugged gently on one of his arms, urging him to get up.  “There’s nothing to do at this point except keep going.  Sitting here won’t help, John.  Let’s go.”

“Give me a microt.” 

She wanted to give him all the time in the universe.  She wanted to ask the others to leave them alone, and for the two of them to sit in this spot for arns.  It would have been nice to just talk for a while, maybe let him take a nap with his head resting on her legs, and then wake him gently and guide him to the Center Chamber when he was feeling less unsettled.  But none of that would help him readjust to the familiar surroundings of their leviathan home.  For the moment, she needed to be strong for him. 

“No,” she said.  “Get up now, John.  Eating will help, and then we’ll get you to your quarters and you can sleep for a while.  That’s the best thing for it.”  When he didn’t move, she pulled on his arm harder and tried again.  “Sitting here won’t make you feel better.  Get up.”   

This time John clambered awkwardly to his feet, took several deep breaths, and resumed the short journey toward the Center Chamber.  Aeryn trailed along several steps behind him, dropping back in response to Chiana’s beckoning hand signal.

“What the frell is wrong with him?” Chiana asked.  “Brain-worm patients are more intelligent than he’s acting right now.  He was better than this the whole time he was on Jothee’s ship.” 

Aeryn ran off a fast list of the obvious problems.  “Starved, exhausted, half-blind from the lights, confused, surprised to find out I’m alive, equally shocked to discover that he’s going to live.  I think that’s enough to explain it.”  She slowed, dropping back several more steps.  “John is going to need time to adjust.  It might be best to let him decide when he is ready to do certain things.” 

“Like what?” Chiana whispered.  “I hope you’re not going to say bathe.” 

“Yes, even bathing.  Once he’s eaten, if he wants to sleep first, we should let him sleep.”

Chiana stopped walking.  “What if he’s injured inside all of that dren, Aeryn?  For all you know he could be sick or have some sort of creeping fatal body rot!”

Aeryn motioned for Chiana to keep moving.  John and Jothee were about to disappear around a corner several motras ahead.  She considered the problem for the length of time it took them to catch up to within two motras of the two males, finally deciding, “The medical scanner should be able to pick anything like that up even through all the clothes and dirt.”

“Food, scan, sleep, stink,” Chiana summed up cheerfully.

Aeryn wrinkled her nose.  “You need to move stink further up on your list.” 

“But he’s alive.”  Chiana veered to one side long enough to bump lightly against Aeryn shoulder to shoulder.  “And he’s going to be okay.” 

“Yes, he is,” Aeryn said quietly, and smiled at the beaming nebari walking alongside her.  “You know.”

“I know what?”  Chiana spun to face her, bounding along sideways.  “You mean I know you had gone just about totally fahrbot worrying about him?  Like you think no one else noticed that you came close to shooting every single living person on board, including Pilot, during the trip back here?” 

“You more than once,” Aeryn said, still smiling at Chiana.   

“I might have noticed that various parts of my body came close to getting shot off a few times.”  Chiana stopped laughing all at once, suddenly looking mournful.  “I know … I know that I might have acted the same way if we had been going back to get D’Argo.” 

Aeryn stopped walking.  “I’m sorry, Chiana.  I’m sorry it wasn’t D’Argo that you were bringing back to Moya.”     

“No, you’re not.  You’re glad it’s Crichton … and so am I.  I’m glad he’s alive.”  She nudged Aeryn into motion.  “Go be with him.  Go on.  Love him.”  She made one last encouraging motion, turned, and loped off in the opposite direction. 

Aeryn watched the gangly figure disappear around the corner of the corridor, summed up the rapid retreat and the jerking, angular movements, and knew that Chiana was handling her grief in the only way she knew how:  by physically running away.  She would start by finding a dark, secluded access shaft empty of DRDs.  Once hidden, she would yell, kick, and cry out her anguish without having to worry about interruptions or anyone commenting on her breakdown.  Aeryn nodded once in the direction Chiana had taken, admitting only to herself and the now empty corridor that Chiana was right.  She was glad that John had survived, and that it wasn’t D’Argo that Jothee and Chiana had gone to retrieve. 

“Aeryn?” 

The soft query drew her out of a reverie that had taken her on a brief mental visit to the pain-filled days aboard the Command Carrier when she had alternated between wishing that D’Argo had been there to keep her company, a warrior who would understand her instinct to be strong at a time when she was physically weakest, and wishing that he had been alive in order to go with John.  John and D’Argo together had always seemed unassailable.  Until the instant when she had knelt in front of D’Argo on Qujaga and seen the resigned acceptance in his eyes, she would have said that the pair could come through any disaster intact as long as they were together. 

“I’m coming,” she said, turning toward the man who continued to defy the odds by surviving one unimaginable hardship after another.  He was standing at the junction of two corridors, body half hidden by one of Moya’s ribs, looking uncertain.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.  Just waiting for you.” 

She couldn’t always tell when John was skirting the truth, but when she knew, she was always certain, and there was no doubt in her mind that he was lying to her now.  Something was bothering him, and it wasn’t anything as simple as the lingering belief that she had died.  The furtive glances to make sure she was beside him had faded within a few microts of leaving the maintenance bay.  They had been replaced by the familiar, fractional tilt of his head that meant a small portion of his attention was always trained on her, always aware of where she was and what she was doing.  He had adjusted quickly to the realization that she was once again a part of his life.  This was something else. 

“How are you doing?” she asked.  It hadn’t been more than two hundred microts since he had gotten to his feet and started walking again.  She didn’t expect to hear that he was feeling any better.  All she wanted was for John to start talking.  Despite her own certainty that it would take time for him to adjust, this quiet, hesitant person was both unfamiliar and worrisome.     

He paused in an intersection of two corridors, looked around him, and then slowly turned in the correct direction for the Center Chamber.  “It feels strange,” he said.

Aeryn waited, hoping that there would be more.  They were within sight of the doorway to the Center Chamber before he said anything else.  When he spoke, his tone of voice made it sound like a guilt-ridden admission of one of his more spectacular blunders than another explanation of the heartbreak he had suffered through for so many days. 

“Aeryn, I thought you were dead.” 

She took one of his hands in hers and squeezed tight.  “I know.  But I’m here now, and I’m real.”

He nodded jerkily several times, worrying a corner of his lower lip between his teeth, and managed to look both furtive and reassured at the same time.  Even after allowing for fatigue, confusion, and starvation, every one of the signals said that he wasn’t telling her something important.  She tugged him to a stop and tried again, using a question that wasn’t so bluntly direct that it would put him on the defensive.  “What do you need?” 

He smiled.  It was another of the not-quite-right reactions.  There was the familiar flash of his teeth, the obvious relief that she was alive, and yet his eyes lacked the joyful gleam that should have been there.  John was putting on no more than a competent act, falling well short of what it would take to fool her.  His answer, although loving, wasn’t enough to convince her that she had gotten it wrong.  “You.  As long as I have you, I’ll be fine.”

She let it go, gesturing for him to lead the way into the Center Chamber, and felt as sick to her stomach as John reportedly had been aboard Jothee’s ship.  The logical side of her mind said that the medical scans might turn up some physiological cause for whatever was going on, and that with some food and rest John might revert to his usual cheerful, frequently incomprehensible behaviors.  It was the part of her that loved him that was saying something far worse than starvation and loneliness had happened to John, and that finding out what had changed might turn into one of the greatest challenges of her life.   
 

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

[KernilCrash]

Part 5

Aeryn stood at the corner of the corridor leading to Quarters, her body half hidden by one of Moya’s internal ribs, watching John.  He was on the bed in exactly the same position she had left him several arns earlier:  lying on his side, curled into a loose ball, staring blankly across the cell without any indication that he was paying attention to his surroundings or that he might be lost in thought.  There was no movement other than the slow rise and fall of his chest and a periodic blink.  There were none of the signs she had come to associate with John’s occasionally intense, introspective fugues.  This was closer to the catatonia he had suffered after closing down the wormhole weapon except that he was awake and was capable of movement.  And because his current state involved a conscious choice on John’s part, it was far more disturbing. 

At first there had been good reason for the depth of his disinterest and lethargy.  Every shred of information they had managed to locate concerning sebacean physiology and starvation had predicted it.  A fast but thorough medical scan the day he had returned to Moya had revealed that John wasn’t as close to death as Aeryn had first feared, but he had been close, stripped down to the last remaining reserves necessary to keep his body alive and functioning normally.  It had required several days on a special diet before they could get the post-meal vomiting to stop and coax his digestive tract into tolerating solid food.  Moya’s datastores had supplied a list of easily digested nutritional supplements, most of which were readily available, and a regimen of nothing more demanding than eating and sleeping for the first five or six solar days.

John had followed their orders like a zombie … up to a certain point.  He had swallowed the thick nutrient mixtures whenever a flask was put in his hand, eaten whatever was put in front of him when ordered, washed down sleep tablets without an argument, and had cooperated whenever they took him back to the maintenance bay with the medical scanner to confirm that he was beginning to process food normally and had begun to gain weight.  What he hadn’t done was allow anyone to undress him, wash, or talk about what had happened on the planet.  The closest they had come was getting him to remove his boots and socks, and his jacket.  The first two had come off under a threat of having it done by force when the medical scanner had picked up a flourishing growth of fungus on his feet.  The jacket he had allowed Aeryn to peel off the first night, only to reveal another one underneath that he hadn’t been willing to remove. 

Since then, John had steadfastly refused to undress any further.  Twelve solar days had passed since he had stumbled off Jothee’s ship, and he remained unshaved, unwashed, and unkempt.  Aside from his first round of frantic questions while lying on the hangar floor he had showed no interest in anything that was going on aboard Moya, and to just to top it all off, as Chiana had phrased it, he was starting to ferment.  The smell was getting worse almost by the arn.   

After several more microts of watching the motionless body lying in their quarters, Aeryn shook her head and made her way back to the intersection of corridors where Chiana, Jothee, and Rygel were waiting for her.  “No change,” she said, retrieving little D’Argo from Chiana’s arms.  “He’s lying there staring, the same as every other day.”

“Try the baby again,” Rygel said, pointing toward D’Argo.  “It worked the other time, after he created that abomination of a weapon.” 

“She’s tried that twice already, wart!”  Chiana took a half-hearted swing at the Dominar’s head.  “Crichton let him cry for two arns straight without showing any sign that he gave a care in the universe that the narl was screaming in his ear.”  She punctuated the statement with a flick of a finger against the most sensitive portion of Rygel’s earbrow.   

“Chiana’s right,” Aeryn said.  “John doesn’t seem to care what happens to anyone, least of all himself.” 

“Haul Yn’dlath back up here and tell him to try again,” Chiana suggested. 

Aeryn shook her head.  “Eidelons aren’t mind readers.  Unless John will talk to him so he can get an idea what is motivating John’s behavior, there’s nothing Yn’dlath can do to influence him.  The person we really need right now is Zhaan.  She could figure out what’s troubling him.” 

That silenced the little group for several microts while they all gloomily considered the cycles-old loss of a family member.  “Blue-butted mystic,” Rygel said in a quiet, morose grumble. 

Aeryn concentrated on the baby for a brief interval, talking to him and leaning close to allow the tiny hands to explore her nose and mouth.  It was the small moments like this that had done the most to banish the insecurity stemming from the simultaneous disappearance of both his mother and father, and to convince him that she would not abandon him again.  Twenty one solar days had passed between the day she had been shot and the first time she had been allowed to sit up and hold him.  Aeryn had spent most of that interval unconscious or in a drug-induced stasis.  According to everyone on board Moya, D’Argo had spent a considerable portion of it crying. 

“Aeryn?” 

Chiana’s voice summoned her away from the imagined distress of an infant who had been deprived of the love of both of his parents at the same time, and back to the more immediate problem of what to do about John.  “I’m thinking,” she said. 

“I’m willing to tongue Crichton,” Jothee said.  “You could at least wash him.  It wouldn’t do anything to improve his personality, but at least some of the rest of us wouldn’t mind being on the same tier.”

Aeryn discarded the possibility as quickly as she had all the others.  “We have to get John to want to do it himself.  He’s stubborn.  Forcing or tricking him is only going to make things worse.  Look at what happened last time.” 

She didn’t have to tell them.  Everyone standing in the junction of corridors knew what had happened when they had tried force.  John had managed to evade a ‘cleaning crew’ consisting of Aeryn, two luxans, and several of the Peacekeepers, after which he had disappeared into the labyrinth of Moya’s innards.  It had taken the DRDs two solar days worth of searching to locate him.  They had found him curled up in a ball, sleeping in a lightless corner near the bottom of the central neural plexus, and if they hadn’t caught up to him while he was asleep, there was no telling how long John could have stayed hidden. 

“And you think your plan is the way to do get him to care about himself again,” Chiana said.  “It’s a terrible plan.  What if he does what you tell him to do?”

“I don’t believe he’ll go through with it,” Aeryn said.  “Either way, I think it’s worth the risk.  We can’t wait any longer.  It has got to be tonight.”  Aeryn handed D’Argo to Rygel.  The baby giggled happily, snared one drooping mustache in a tiny fist and began sucking on it. 

“And if he runs and hides again?  What then?” Rygel asked.  His response to D’Argo tugging on his whiskers was to tilt his head to one side, putting more of the mustache within the baby’s reach. 

Aeryn smiled at the sight of the Hynerian ruler allowing himself to be mauled by her son, shook her head slightly at the pair, and then concentrated on the problem of what to do about Crichton.  “Pilot has DRDs stationed at every route off this tier, even the maintenance shafts.  Although there’s a chance John can lose them, it’s a small one.” 

“I say it’s better to let Jothee tongue him, and deal with what’s bothering him later,” Chiana said. 

Aeryn wandered several steps toward Quarters, weighing the various alternatives and their relative costs for what felt like the hundredth time.  Behind her, everyone waited silently.  “No,” she said after several microts of deliberation.  “I need to know what’s bothering him, and I want to know tonight.  We’ve tried to be patient.  The time has come to try something else.” 

“Frontal assault.  Typical Peacekeeper,” Rygel said. 

“When all else fails --” Aeryn began.

“-- blow a hole in the front door and go in shooting,” Chiana finished for her, laughing. 

“That’s not exactly how they phrased it in our training.”  Aeryn shifted her attention from the still grinning nebari to her son.  She caressed his head, smoothing down the fine, dark hair.  “Rygel, perhaps I should leave him with someone else.” 

“Someone else?”  Rygel’s voice started as a low grumble, rising in both pitch and volume as he continued, “Are you implying that someone could take better care of this little one than I have?” 

“No, Rygel, that’s not what --” Aeryn tried to interject.

“Tell me, who took care of the baby while you were lying in a stasis chamber close to death?”

“You did, Rygel, but --”

“And who located the food supplement that would keep the child from starving while your body was either too badly injured or too full of drugs to nurse him?”

“You did, Rygel.  And I will always --”

“And who does he love even more than his own parents, and has vowed to provide him with a safe home and the finest education available in the --”

“Yes, Rygel!” she said more loudly, drowning out his lengthening spiel.  “You’ve taken as good care of him as either John or I could have managed, and I can never repay you for that.  I wasn’t questioning whether you would take good care of him.  I was trying to suggest that watching over him one more night was too much to ask of you since you’ve spent so much time looking after him recently.” 

“Never,” Rygel said.  “I carried him as long as you did, Aeryn.  My body nourished him during the most critical phase of his development.  He’s as much mine as he is yours and Crichton’s, and don’t you ever forget that.”  The throne sled spun to one side, putting the Dominar’s body between Aeryn and her son, emphasizing his emotional claim on the baby.

“How could she forget?  You only remind her ten or twelve times every solar day!” Chiana said.  “And if you ask me, I think the reason you like him so much is because he’s the only person aboard Moya who isn’t bigger than you!  Now let Aeryn say goodnight to the narl so we can all get out of here and away from that horrible stench coming from their quarters!” 

Grumbling over the insults, Rygel nevertheless steered his floating chair back toward Aeryn and obediently relinquished D’Argo for one more round of cuddling and goodnight kisses.  Thirty microts later, Chiana, Jothee, and Rygel, who was once again carrying the baby, had disappeared around the corner at the far end of the passageway.  Aeryn was left standing alone, free to concentrate on John and whatever was causing his withdrawal. 

She remained where she was for nearly a quarter arn while she organized her thoughts, reviewed the verbal battle plan she had formed, and locked down her emotions.  The upcoming confrontation would require strength and a carefully applied level of brutality, not tears or other signs of weakness. 

The man she had unwillingly left behind on the charrid-infested planet was gone.  That person had been confident to the point of arrogance, brash, and so committed to her welfare that he had eagerly put his own life at risk as long as it meant she would survive.  Chiana and Jothee had brought someone else back to Moya.  The person sprawled on their bed cared about nothing.  If left to himself, he would starve to death, never taking his eyes off the far wall while his body melted away. 

Based on some of his cryptic comments over the past few solar days, she had formed a theory about the source of his depression.  She had seen John in this sort of sullen, withdrawn, internally agonized state more than once, although never so severe, and the reason behind it had involved the same moral dilemma every time.  But telling him what was wrong wouldn’t resolve what she suspected was an intense internal struggle.  Only John could fix this.  He would have to find both the problem and the answer himself, and make a conscious decision to return to his life.

Finally, she took a deep breath, did her best to ignore the nervous cramping in her stomach that she had never experienced until well after the day she met the peculiar alien named John Crichton, and entered their quarters.  The stranger barely acknowledged her presence. 

“Get out.”

John flicked a glance in her direction, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and obediently headed for the nearest doorway. 

“And take all your dren with you.”  Scooping up an armful of his clothes, she hurled them into the corridor.  “Don’t just move next door either.  Get off this tier.  You reek.  Even Rygel can’t stand the smell.  Jothee and his men have already moved several tiers away from this one, but the rest of us refuse to move just because you’re too lazy to bathe.  Tier One should be far enough away that we don’t have to cope with the smell.” 

John’s chess set and several other items clattered into the corridor next.  She didn’t know what she had grabbed.  What she was doing frightened her so much she didn’t dare concentrate on anything except the next few stages of her plan and how worried she was that it wouldn’t work out the way she hoped.

John walked halfway back to the shelves lining the inner wall of the cell, stared around at the accumulated clutter of five cycles worth of living aboard Moya, and looked bewildered.  He started toward a stack of clothes, and then drew to a stop.  “These are my quarters.”

“These used to be our quarters.  Now they’re mine.  Get out.”

He turned in a circle.  “I’ve lived here since the first day I came aboard Moya.”

“I live here now.  It was ours together for a short time; now it’s mine.  You stink and you’re useless, so you’re the one who is going to leave.”  Without bothering to check whether she was grabbing her possessions or John’s, she gathered a double armful of items and heaved them out the open doorway.  There was an expanding carpet of clothing and other objects building up in the corridor.  Several DRDs were wending their way through the obstacles, examining each one with interest and sorting out anything that had broken before moving on to the next.   

John frowned.  It was the closest thing to an emotion she had seen in more than ten solar days.  She would have preferred a grin, but any reaction from him was preferable to the silent, sullen walking corpse who showed no interest in life.  Aeryn moved along the shelves grabbing whatever came to hand easily, firing a hailstorm of objects into the corridor.  This time much of it was hers.  It didn’t matter.  She spotted one of the toys John had brought back from Earth, the coiled metal object that served no purpose, and scooped it up.

“NO!”  John lunged for it.  “It’s impossible to unknot a Slinky when it gets tangled!” 

Aeryn sidestepped his grab and deliberately hurled it so it would ricochet off the edge of the doorway, intent on maximum damage.  The metal made a whispering ‘zing’ as it slithered and rattled an erratic, snaking course out of sight.  The eyestalks of several DRDs swiveled to watch its progress. 

“Dammit!  Cut it out, Aeryn!” 

He was angry.  She was getting somewhere.  Aeryn persevered, hoping that the burst of energy might be the start of something more permanent, not just a hiccup in the enduring apathy.  Several pairs of his socks and her own coat flew out the door.  She looked around for something else to jettison, using the break to yell at him.  “Get out!  Either shower and shave or get out!”

John watched the latest collection of projectiles sail out into the corridor, and then, all at once, the anger was gone.  In its place was the same pervading lack of energy that had controlled him for the past days, and an expression that Aeryn thought might be guilt … over what she wasn’t sure. 

“Choose.  Now,” she said, hoping to provoke another, more energetic response.

“Aeryn, I still --”  He took a step toward her, reaching out with both arms as if to hug her. 

“No!  Don’t tell me you love me unless you intend to prove it.”  She shoved him away with a forceful two-handed thrust. 

“Aeryn!”  This time it was a protest.

“It took us fourteen solar days to get back here from the Command Carrier.  Fourteen, John.  Do you understand?”

He remained where he had come to rest after the stumbling recovery from her push, looking more bewildered and beaten down than she could remember ever seeing him, and didn’t answer. 

Long ago John had explained to her how his species had evolved from a non-sentient, lower life form.  She had never truly believed what he had told her, not until she looked at the filthy figure standing in the middle of their quarters frozen in place by a combination of confusion and hurt.  With his hair and beard matted and stiff with dirt and other filth that she didn’t want to guess at, exposed skin turned a grubby brownish-gray by the same unidentifiable, repulsive layers, and encased in a crackling, stinking carapace of cloth, leather, and yet more layers of dirt, John Crichton had been transformed into some sort of man-animal lacking the reason and willpower to take control of his life.  The dull, disinterested look in his eyes finished the effect, leaving Aeryn feeling as though she had walked into a cage holding some dim-witted semi-sentient creature suitable for nothing better than backbreaking, menial labor. 

“John, do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?” she repeated. 

After several microts worth of thought, he shook his head.  “No.” 

“I spent fourteen solar days not knowing whether you were alive or dead, fourteen solar days of having to face the possibility that you might have died during the initial diversion and retreat, or had been killed in the time it took the other to find medical help for me.  I spent those days preparing myself for the possibility that you were dead.  I cannot go through that again.” 

He performed a slow, clumsy pirouette, looking at the walls, the floor, the open doors, everything but her.  “I’m not dead,” he said once he had finished his revolution. 

“Not yet.  If you’re going to let yourself die, then do it somewhere else.  I will not watch you die this soon after getting you back.”  She let the fear of losing him run free, allowing it to curl and warp into something other than concern.  It vaporized, caught flame, roared into energetic life, and exploded into an aching, painful form of anger.  Stepping close enough that she gagged on the sour stench of him, she hit him in the chest with both hands, this time with all her strength.  It propelled him backwards, stumbling, into the corridor. 

“Get out!  Go up to Tier Two where Pilot has shut down all the subsystems, find a dark hole to crawl into, and die, John.  I refuse to watch!” 

“Aeryn … don’t … ”  The objection was as listless and confused as every other comment he had made over the past few microts. 

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t stop loving me.”  He began to fold in on himself, both forearms wrapped around his chest as though shielding a mortal wound.  “You are all I have left.  Without you … there’s nothing.”

She was nearly sick to her stomach with what she was doing to him, and couldn’t think of any other way to get John to break out of the self-destructive state he had sunk into.  Watching him curl around an internal, unfocussed pain that she understood even if she had never felt it herself, she wanted to go to him, hold him, and speak words of compassion and her undying love for him.  But none of that would bring John Crichton back to her.  Coddling and cajoling hadn’t worked.  It was time for something more brutal. 

“Then don’t stop loving me!”  She threw it back as a snarling challenge, not as an endearment. 

“I haven’t.” 

Aeryn crossed the distance between them in three fast steps, grabbed him by the front of his jacket, and flung him into the waste alcove.  John tripped, went down on one knee, and skidded to a sprawling stop near the shower partition. She hauled him up and thrust him toward the mirror.  “Look at yourself!  This isn’t love for me.  This is weakness.  This is being spineless.  This is turning away from who you are and everything we mean to each other.” 

“Cut it out!”  John pulled loose and staggered to one side.  “You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me.”  Her head spun dizzily for a moment, filled to overflowing with more than a dozen different hopes and fears, each one revolving around the possibility that John might finally break out of his overwhelming self-loathing and finally begin to recover from whatever was causing his depression. 

“You were dead.  I saw you get hit.  I knew it here.”  He thumped the center of his chest.  “I knew it the same way I know that I love you:  with every fiber of my heart.”   

“I wasn’t.  It was close, but I didn’t die.  You’ve known that for several days now.” 

He spun around in a circle, managing to appear trapped even though he was standing in the middle of an uncluttered expanse of floor.  “You can’t …”  John broke off, looking confused and guilty. 

“I can’t what, John?  I can’t understand?” she asked, spacing the words out for emphasis.  “I don’t know how it feels to watch someone you love die right in front of your eyes?  I don’t know how empty it leaves you?  How hopeless?  How full of pain?  Is that what you were going to say?”

“It wasn’t the same,” he said. 

“No,” she said, over agreeably, and then shifted to unveiled sarcasm.  “I wasn’t lost or confused after watching you die.  I didn’t try to shut off all my feelings in the hope that if I stopped feeling all emotion that I might stop feeling the pain as well.  I didn’t leave everything that was familiar and comforting and go in search of a way of life that could only lead to more death and more killing.  It was entirely different, John.  I don’t know the first thing about what you went through.”

“That’s not …”  He made a frustrated gesture that involved his entire upper body.  “Damn it, that’s not what I mean.”   

“Tell me what you mean, John.  Make me understand how what happened to you is any different than what I went through or what Chiana felt when D’Argo died.”

Aeryn watched as the combination of John’s lingering depression and his newfound frustration began to combine into a new level of anger, and was only mildly surprised to discover that it pleased her.  She would have preferred to trigger a more positive emotion, but at least John was on his feet and fighting back, which was more than anyone had gotten out of him over the last twelve solar days. 

It continued to mount without any further goading from her.  After two more increasingly erratic circuits of the cell, John veered to one side long enough to grab one of his notebooks and then flung it out the door to join the rest of the litter in the corridor.  Several items of clothing went next, followed by the shattering impact from a picture of his family he had brought back from Earth.  He went down the line of shelves, hurling one thing after another with increasing fury, until he reached the standing rack where his overcoat and his pulse pistol were hanging.  The weapon came out of the holster with a wrenching snatch, and he spun around, his arm coming back for another throw.

“It’ll go off!” she yelled, already bolting for cover.  “Unload it first!” 

John jerked to a stop, looked down at Winona long enough to remove the chakan oil cartridge, and then made a slow survey of their quarters.  From the way he was holding the pulse pistol, she thought he might be looking for a place to set it down. 

She was wrong. 

To the accompaniment of a drawn out, wordless howl, he hurled the weapon out the cell door with so much force that he lost his balance.  He tumbled forward onto his hands and knees, scrambled for a moment, and then bounded back to his feet, already headed toward the shelves lining the walls of their quarters.  A new barrage of items went sailing out the door, this time gathered almost entirely from what had become “her side” of the storage units.   

It took several battering impacts against the tier walls before she realized what he was grabbing.  Weapons.  John was throwing weapons.  Every weapon, power pack, sheath, holster, cleaning tool, and maintenance kit was flung into the corridor with ever-increasing levels of fury.  Anything even vaguely associated with a weapon or capable of being used as a weapon went clattering and banging into the passageway, until there was nothing left to throw.  John spun around so he faced the middle of the room.  Panting slightly, looking marginally deranged, he surveyed the cell, clearly searching for something else to add to the mess. 

“Tell me,” Aeryn said into the silence.

His answer was short and emphatic.  “No.” 

She moved closer to him.  “Tell me.  Tell me what happened that has you” -- she gestured toward his addition to the extensive mess lying outside the cell doors -- “acting like this.  Tell me.”  She took another step toward him.  “I will never stop loving you, no matter what.” 

“No.”

“Tell me.”  Aeryn stepped close enough to touch him.  She ran her thumb across his cheekbone, stared into his eyes, and tried one more time.  “Tell me.  Please.  I want to understand.”   

He backed away from her, shoulders high with frustration, muscles jerking and quivering from head to foot, his entire body in motion even though he wasn’t going anywhere.  It went on for more then ten microts before he jammed his hands onto his hips, spun around to look out the door one more time, and finally faced her.  The answer, when it came, didn’t surprise her.  It was what she had suspected.

“I … killed people!”   

“You’ve killed before.  I know you hate it.  We’ve been through this more than once.” 

“NO!” he yelled.  “That’s just it.  I … I …”  He spun away and headed into the corridor at a half-run.

Revelation hit.  It had taken half an arn to beat their way through to it, but at last the source of the self-loathing was out in the open.  “You enjoyed it!”

In the space of two steps he slowed to a walk, allowing the momentum to carrying him across the corridor to the far wall.  His voice, when he spoke, barely carried the short distance back to where Aeryn stood inside the cell.  “I didn’t just enjoy it.”

“You came to love it,” she said.  “It felt good.”

Turning around, he yelled at her, “Yes!  I loved it.  It felt great!”  He swept a foot through the heap of stuff in the hallway, reached down, and came up with a sheathed long blade.  It was one of hers.  Measuring half a motra from the tip to the butt of the hilt, designed for close-quarters killing, and honed down to a sharpness that would slice through bone without a pause, it was identical to the one John had been carrying when he came back aboard Moya.  The only thing missing was the dried dirt and blood that had been embedded in the joints and grooves of the knife John had been in a hurry to throw away.  He yanked this one out of its scabbard, tossed the black sheath away, and strode back into the cell.  There was an unpleasant crazed gleam in his eyes when he waved the weapon in her direction. 

“You know what’s best?” he asked.  “If you get it just right, if you let the edge ride up along the collar of their armor so it slides in between the top of the chest plate and the lower edge of their helmet, and then pull really hard” -- John imitated the process, ending with a fast slicing motion -- “their head comes clean off.  Charrid heads aren’t fastened on as well as some other species.  It’s easy, Aeryn.  You just” -- he repeated the motion, light glinting off the fast moving blade -- “and it comes right off.  I wanted to take them home with me at the end of the night, and line them up.  If I’d had a bag to carry them in, I would have!  I could have practiced drop kicks with them, or dribbled them around like soccer balls, or practiced foul shots.  It would have been … fun.”

The last word came out shakily.  John stared at the knife in his hand for several microts, and then let it drop to the floor and backed away from it, wiping an already dirty hand on filthy pants.  “I dreamed of different ways to kill them,” he said through clenched teeth, “so many different ways.  But there’s only one way to get through their armor, so I never got to try any of them out.”  He looked around the chamber, no longer the willing, enthusiastic killer, and shivered.  “I killed so many of them.”

Aeryn took several steps toward him, stopping when it looked like he might bolt.  “John, when we were young –-”

“We being Peacekeepers,” he said, interrupting. 

“Yes.  Peacekeepers,” she said.  “As junior cadets, we were taught that there is a particular form of freedom that is invoked when you choose to kill another being.  Not when you do it because you’re ordered, but because you want to kill.  They taught us that choosing to kill unlocks potentials that you won’t even know exist until the first time you kill someone with your bare hands.  It is as though all the laws of the universe bend to your will.  You make the rules.  You determine who lives and who dies.  You become something more than what you were before you learned to kill.” 

“They were wrong,” John’s mumbled voice said. 

“They were wrong about most of it.  What they were right about is that killing is addictive.  For the length of time it takes to kill someone, you are in control of life and death.  You become a god.”

“I didn’t turn into a god.  I became an animal.  And it felt … right.”  He looked into her eyes.  “I looked forward to going out at night and killing them!  The heavier the rain, the thicker the mud, the more I liked it.  If they fought back, that was even better.  A slow death was better than a quick kill.  I would have killed them with my bare hands if I could have.  I would have ripped their hearts out.”

This part she hadn’t anticipated.  John’s self-loathing whenever he was forced to kill was thoroughly familiar.  The pronouncement of the degree of the alteration was unexpected.  She held his stare, searching for an answer, until he broke away and wandered over to sit on the bed.  In the end, it was his physical appearance that provided some guidance in how to handle the problem.  It was the transformation from the John Crichton she had first met nearly five cycles ago into this bestial, stinking remnant of a sentient being that provided an insight that she hoped might hold the answer to this problem. 

“John.”  She waited until he looked up at her.  “Do you remember what you told me the first day we met?”  It was an easy question with a well-known answer.

“You can be more,” he said listlessly. 

Aeryn went to kneel in front of him, breathing carefully through her mouth so she wouldn’t be distracted by the smell.  “And,” she prompted.

“And you’ve changed.  You’re not that person anymore.”  His eyes remained fixed on the floor between his feet. 

“John, in order to change I was forced to find portions of myself that I didn’t even know existed.  You forced me to find those parts.”  She waited for a nod before continuing.  “You’ve been forced to find parts of yourself that you didn’t know were inside you.  But in your case, in order to survive here, you have been forced to find and use parts of your personality that you don’t like.” 

There was no response.  She tried again.  “You have sunk to where I began.”

“This isn’t the same, Aeryn.”

“No, it’s not.  It’s not the same because you know that you can be more than a mindless killer.  You’re starting with an advantage that I didn’t have.” 

He swung his head from side to side, a slow-motion headshake.  “I’m not even me anymore.” 

“How do you mean?”   

“Do you remember Lieutenant Hassan?” he asked.  “And Larraq?”

“Clearly,” she said.

“I couldn’t sleep for nights after I killed them.  Telling myself that it was the only way to stop the virus, and that it was about survival didn’t help.  I couldn’t sleep or eat for days.”  He stared past her.  “Over the past … God, I don’t even know how long I was down there.” 

“Forty-eight solar days,” she said quietly. 

“The only reason to sleep was so I’d have enough energy to go out and kill and kill and kill, and then kill some more.  I’m just as bad as every cold-blooded murderer I’ve despised on this end of the universe.  I’m no different from Scorpius or Grayza or Maldis or any other of the dozen or so raving psychopaths we’ve stumbled across the past few cycles.  I’ve turned into everything I hate.  What the hell have I become over the past five cycles that I could do something like that?  What kind of father can I be if I can turn a mindless, psychotic monster without even realizing what I’m doing?  You and the little D deserve someone better than Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, and Vlad the Impaler all rolled into one.” 

She moved closer, reaching up to push some of the hair away from his eyes.  “It’s not true.  Stop and look at yourself for a microt.”

John stared at his hands, looked down at his body, and then shook his head.  “You lost me.” 

“Someone who is a killer at heart doesn’t sit around tearing himself apart afterward.  A killer goes on killing:  without remorse, without second thoughts, without guilt, without ever looking back to mourn his victims.  I was once such a person.  You never have been and never will be.”

He shook his head, still fully enthralled by his own guilt and the depths to which he had sunk. 

“If I could put cycles of training behind me, then you can put this behind you.  You already know that you are much more than this.  What you did down on that planet doesn’t have to control the rest of your life.”

“Like it’s going to go away, Aeryn?”  He let out a small snort of disbelief. 

The need to hug him grew to nearly uncontrollable levels.  There was an uncomfortable snarl of love, understanding, and fear building in her chest wrapped around the possibility that John would never move beyond this guilt-ridden, apathetic state, and the sensation was making it hard to think.  One microt there was half a dozen additional arguments lined up in her mind, small verbal demolition charges standing ready to be set off in a particular sequence, intended to demolish the high, restrictive walls John had built to imprison the best parts of himself, and the next microt they were gone.  It took a single, nauseating lurch of her stomach to scatter her carefully marshaled thoughts.  In the end, finding nothing adequate to say, she resorted to a physical response.  Aeryn got to her feet and smacked him in the shoulder with one hand, very nearly propelling him backwards off the bed. 

“Then give up,” she said, resuming the harsh, unsympathetic tones.  “But you don’t get to do it here.  Get out.” 

He looked around the cell, worrying his lower lip between his teeth.  “It’s not just me I’m thinking of,” he said after an extended silence.  “Kids need a father who can teach them right from wrong.” 

“You don’t get to worry about that anymore.  You are useless to us as long as you are like this.  If you can’t pull yourself together, then I’ll raise D’Argo alone.”  She didn’t mean it.  The idea of going through the cycles attempting to raise a small child on her own scared her to the point of not being able to breathe.  But reason wasn’t working.  The only comments that seemed to break through John’s depression were threats. 

“Why are you doing this to me?”  It was as much a plea for her to stop as it was a question, and he seemed to be on the verge of tears as he asked, “Why?”

The anguish in his voice broke through the last of her defenses.  Tears, desperation, and honesty all tumbled loose at the same instant.  “Because I love you, and I cannot stand idly and watch you slowly wither away.  If you don’t stop this you are going to die.  You can’t ask me to watch that happen!” 

John had his head in his hands now, slowly rocking it from side to side.  She knelt down in front of him and placed her hands on his knees.  It took three tries before she could get the next few words to come out.

“Do you love Aeryn Sun?”

His head came up so fast she could hear the vertebrae in his neck make a quiet crackling.  An initial look of hurt faded quickly, turning into guilt.  “You know I do.” 

“Then don’t do this to me.  Don’t walk away from me because you can’t face what you’ve done.  Don’t do to me what I did to you.  You’re stronger than I was, and I’m not going anywhere this time.”  When he didn’t respond, she added, “Please … choose to live.” 

“You mean everything to me.  You and D’Argo,” he added.   

“I know that.  I also know that you would never have done this if it weren’t for me.  This is partly my fault for letting you love me so much.”

“Let me … love you so much,” he repeated slowly.  “Nothing you’ve ever done could stop me from loving you.”

She ran her knuckles down his cheek, staring into the tear-blurred eyes, and whispered to him, trying to reach him with gentleness instead of bludgeoning him with demands.  “If that’s true, then love me enough to end this.  Stop lying here like a corpse.  Wash.  Eat because you want to live instead of because one of us orders you to eat.” 

He stared at her for more than a dozen microts, then dropped his head and rubbed his forehead with the heel of one hand.  It went on for so long Aeryn was convinced that she had lost.  Her arsenal was empty.  Every round of logic had been expended, every emotional landmine tripped, every small demolition charge set off.  If her final plea wasn’t enough to convince him, Aeryn didn’t know how she was going to get John Crichton back. 

The declaration of her victory, when it came, was so well disguised she didn’t recognize it at first. 

“I stink,” John said.   

It was the first time in twelve solar days that he had shown any interest in his hygiene.  Aeryn had to take several breaths before she was sure she could keep her voice steady long enough to answer him.  “Would you like to get cleaned up?” 

With his head still hanging, eyes fixed on his bare feet, John nodded. 

“Come on.  I’ll give you a hand.  But I want a promise from you,” she said.

He glanced at her, looked toward the chaotic heap of their possessions covering several square motras of the corridor floor, and then back at her.  “What?” 

“I want you to promise that you will stop this.”  With a nod of her head she indicated the bed where he had been lying listlessly for the past twelve solar days.  “You have to promise to work at it.  You have to try.”

John’s idea of ‘trying’ was the equivalent of any other person vowing that they would put every bit of their energy into the effort.  If he promised her that he would try, there would be no half-measures, no abortive attempts to recover from his depression.  He would spend every free microt working his way through it, delving into his own emotions, sorting them out, rationalizing, until he was one again cheerfully barging through life, albeit more aware of the depths to which he could sink if he ever chose to let himself go there again.  The ever-present, hovering specter of his past actions would prevent a repetition of the recent events though.  She was certain of that.  He would learn from what he had done, commit himself to never allowing it to happen again, and he would move on. 

John rubbed a hand over his face, ran a thumb and forefinger across his eyes, and then nodded.  When he spoke, it was in the guttural, slurred voice that meant he was fighting hard not to cry.  “It may take a while.” 

“I don’t care how long it takes.”  Her transformation from an uncaring soldier who despised compassion to the person who knew how to handle a full gamut of emotions had taken several cycles.  John’s journey deserved no less. 

“All right,” he said.  “I promise.”

There were no words to express her relief.  If he had been cleaner, she would have kissed him.  Aeryn spent a microt considering whether she could ignore the layers of grime long enough to provide a physical testimony of how much she loved him, and was saved from having to make a decision.  Before she could move or speak, John’s shoulders slumped, he let out a long breath, and he delivered one additional accusation against himself.  “I should have been stronger.”

Aeryn sat down next to him.  “You kept your promise to stay alive.  That was enough.”

His voice cracked and slid into silence when he tried to answer.  John shook his head, cleared his throat, and tried again.  “You always tell me to meet my fears with strength.  I should have been stronger.”   

Final condemnation delivered, John began to crumble physically, an outward response to whatever inner destruction he was experiencing.  His head went first, tilting toward her and making a slow descent.  His body followed and she let him come, guiding him and shuffling over to make some room so that he could lie on his side with his head in her lap.  His legs and body came next, continuing the full-body contraction.  It didn’t stop until he was curled up on the bed, nestled in against her, one hand resting lightly on her leg as though he still required additional proof that she wasn’t going to disappear.  It was a show of weakness and insecurity that she rarely witnessed from John Crichton, and it revealed the extent of the damage he had inflicted on himself.   

There were things she could have told him that might have helped.  She could have talked to him about learning to love, and how loss took on new meaning once the lesson was learned; or about how easy it was to kill when nothing mattered except living long enough to win the next fight; or how what John would consider moral behavior sometimes went astray when all the other trappings of civilization were stripped away by armed conflict.  John had learned to cope with the reality of what it took to survive in a violent universe, but despite what had just happened to him, he still hadn’t faced the fact that most of the rules concerning what he believed to be civilized behavior broke down once the fighting broke out.

There were some thoughts about how much she had needed John to come back to her alive, and that she didn’t care what he had done as long it meant he survived.  And there was a poorly constructed argument drifting around in the back of her mind that had to do with how much D’Argo would need his father over the cycles to come, not as some hero, but as an example of what it took to survive one day after another until he had lived the best life he could manage.  But in the time it took her to sort out the one thing that mattered most, John had put both his hands over his eyes and was letting out the slow, overly-controlled breaths that meant he was crying. 

So she remained silent and waited, using touch to let him know that nothing was going to change how much she loved him.  She was prepared to wait as long as it took.  They had been through worse.  John was alive, he had given her his word, and they were together.  That was all that mattered.   

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